Zootopia: A Raccoon's Revenge
by Old Goat
Summary: Jake Runnel isn't your typical raccoon, he's a former thief with friends on both sides of the law. When someone begins ritually killing his fellow raccoons, he's going to make sure there's hell to pay. Nick Wilde's best friend returns in an entertaining adventure mystery. (Based on Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption)
1. The Ocelot

**ZOOTOPIA: A RACCOON'S REVENGE**

 **Jake Runnel meets an old acquaintance for dinner. This story takes place after the events of** _ **Sins of our Fathers**_ **and is based on the story** _ **Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption.**_

 **Jake is a raccoon who has become Nick Wilde's best friend, almost a little brother to the older fox. He is a former thief who now runs a small security firm and has friends on both sides of the law.**

 **This story is a bit of an experiment because each chapter will unfold as it is witnessed by a different mammal. The mammal in the first chapter is a member of the feline species called an ocelot found in Central and South America, at least in our reality. Jake is a common raccoon and Jasmine is a similar species sometimes called a crab-eating raccoon.**

 _I do not own the rights to Zooptopia or any of its characters. This story was written solely for the reader's enjoyment and without any profitable purposes. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this story are fictitious. (Does this legal disclaimer make you happy Mr. Moleinger?)_

* * *

 **Chapter 1: The Ocelot**

Francisco couldn't help but overhear the couple sitting at one of the café's outdoor tables and the ocelot grinned at their conversation. "Seduced me?" the female raccoon giggled as the attractive male raccoon in the dark blue suit, white dress shirt, and yellow tie caressed her paw. She looked into his brown eyes, but the downtown café's courtyard light shadowed his face making him look slightly mysterious. "My dear Mr. Runnel, I thought I was seducing you that night? I figured I'd get you upstairs in my hotel room and after a quickie, toss you out! After all, I thought I'd hidden those emeralds in a place where you would never find them. I wasn't prepared for such a rutting as you gave me."

"Rutting?" the male raccoon winced and then grinned at his companion, a female raccoon in a tight dark red dress. She sipped her glass of wine as she mischievously peered at him with her dark eyes. "Jasmine, please that's such a harsh word! You were the first raccoon I ever made love to and so I was rather excited."

The waiter had to agree that she was very attractive, the raccoon had a slim body which could drive most males crazy and her voice had an almost musical accent, betraying that she was from near his homeland, probably from one of the eastern tropical islands. Although she was almost as tall as he was, her fur was a much shorter brownish grey and even the telltale "bandit's mask" around her eyes was lighter than his. He watched as the tip of her ringed tail slightly twitched and it reminded him of a cat playing with her prey.

"Excited!" she scoffed. "You wore me out, but I do have to admit that you're one of the most satisfying romps I've ever had."

The male raccoon grinned at that and chuckled, "I've learned a few new tricks since then!"

The raccoon named Jasmine blushed before continuing, "Now Jake if I take you up on your implied offer, are you also going to try to rob me again?"

"Aw, come on!" the male raccoon laughed. "You made it too easy that night! Plus, I only took one emerald and left you the others. Actually, I could argue it was a fair trade since I did leave you something in return."

"I know, the red rose that you left inside the bag," she sighed. Then with a sarcastic voice she added, "You also left me sore between my legs and with a hangover, not to mention the three spent condoms."

"As I said, I was excited," he chuckled. "We're going to have to stop at the pharmacy tonight, I only have one packet."

"Hah! You are a daring one!" she giggled. "Who says that's going to happen?"

He squeezed her paw and huskily replied, "Are you saying that it's not?"

"No, I saying we haven't even ordered dinner and I 'm hungry!" she said. "Then maybe, just maybe, after dinner we can stop at the pharmacy across the street. So what's good to eat at this place?"

"I'd recommend the raw oysters," he answered with a grin. "I hear they're an aphrodisiac."

"Oh Lamb," she huffed. "I know I'm going to regret this in the morning."

"I take that you're saying yes?" he said as he pretended to be reading the menu. "But I'm not finding what I really want being served."

"What's that?" she asked and gave him a puzzled look.

"Raccoon," he said without looking up at her. "So I guess I have a settle for the shrimp cocktail instead."

As he began to approach their table, Francisco stopped and turned back when he heard her giggle, "Maybe if you behave yourself during dinner, you might find raccoon on the dessert menu. Now let's see, they have tuna balls…nope, I might lick some balls later. Turkey sausage, hmmm, I wonder how long it is?"

"Lion above, you can even turn me on talking about food," Jake chuckled. "Now behave yourself, I think our waiter can hear us. He has started approaching our table twice and turned back, I think he doesn't want to disturb our conversation."

"You want to share an order of a half dozen oysters?" she suggested, seemingly ignoring his comments. "Someone recommended them, something about their being…"

"And there he goes back, you chased him off again!" he snickered. "I'm going to have to give the poor guy a hell of a tip."

She smiled and ran her paw up his arm before saying, "So oysters it is!"

"I'm going to let you order," he sighed. "You've got me confused."

"You seem to be in a hurry," she giggled. "It's almost as if you had big plans tonight."

"I do have plans," he huskily replied. Then noticing that Francisco was hesitantly approaching, he turned and said to him, "We're ready to order, please forgive our behavior."

The ocelot shrugged as he replied with a grin, "I didn't want to disturb your romantic tit for tat."

"Romantic tit for tat? I guess that does define our conversation, you cute feline eavesdropper," she began. Francisco tutted at her as she added, "I do find you cute in a very masculine studdish way."

"Quit seducing the waiter," Jake sighed as he looked up at the now blushing ocelot. "I'll tell you what, give me the apron and I'll be the waiter. That way you two can sit here making google eyes at each other."

"I don't know, maybe I'll take you both with me when I go," she giggled.

"I'm sorry, you're very pretty and all," Francisco chuckled. "But he's more my type."

Looking over at the now blushing male raccoon, she laughed. "Alas, I would lose out on that deal. So please bring us a half order of oysters, a house salad to share, and a bottle of Champagne."

"Are we celebrating something?" Francisco heard the male raccoon ask her.

"No you silly hunk of coon," she giggled. "You always have Champagne with oysters."

"Oh, I usually have mine with beer on the beach," he shrugged. "I guess I should hang around you more often and you can teach me how to be classy."

The ocelot's ear flicked as she replied, "It's all a front. When you work the island casinos, you learn to play the game." He smiled because he had worked some of the casinos before he moved to Zootopia and it was a like a game, mostly mammals wanting to be seen with the rich and famous. For the staff and waiters, sometimes the perks were better than the tips. He was a young attractive gay male who was lean, almost thin, and his fur was short and smooth with his tawny coat punctuated by black and dark brown stripes and spots. Under his neck, the cream colored fur showed from under his dark blue shirt. He stood just over three feet tall with a thin 16 inch tail, which twitched as he moved with the gracefulness that only a cat can have. More than one wealthy guest wanted to get a lot more the just their paws on his body.

"So are you playing a game with me tonight?" the male raccoon asked her. "I can't afford to be caught with you if you're doing anything illegal, I'm on parole. Besides, I gave up on that old lifestyle and have gone legit. I run a small security consulting company nowadays and I even have others who are counting on me as the owner."

"I heard you've gone legit. Believe it or not, you could say that I'm actually on the side of the angels this time," she answered. "I'm on parole myself, you see my island's government said they'd clean my record if I recover a missing stone."

"A missing stone?" Jake asked. "What kind of stone?"

"A wolf paw sized chunk of black quartz," she said. "It's…well special and it was smuggled here years ago by my cousin."

"So is it worth something?" Jake asked as he leaned forward with curiosity. "Who did she steal it for?"

"She didn't steal it, but rescued it from some very dangerous mammals who attacked her convent," Jasmine sighed. "She mailed clues of its location before they killed her. I've got notes to follow and was supposed to have met one of my late cousin's associates, but she went missing."

"So you've got the notes with you?" Jake said. "Let's see them."

"They're hidden, like I hid the emeralds," she replied. Then smiling, she added, "I may let you see them in the morning."

"Oh, so it's a treasure hunt?" he chuckled. "But first, there's some treasure sitting across the table I want to get my paws on."

Before she could reply, Francisco arrived with their food and Champagne. "Is there anything else I may get you?" he asked as he smiled and winked at the male raccoon, to the great amusement of Jasmine.

"Thanks, but I've had a better offer," Jake chuckled. "At least, I think I do?"

"Shut up and eat!" she giggled. "You'll need your strength."

"That's a yes!" he said with a grin.

Francisco smiled and as he was walking away, her heard her ask, "By the way, I always wanted to ask you, where you got the rose that night?"

"For a notorious smuggler and jewel thief, you really aren't observant," he replied. "There was a couple dozen being delivered for someone at the lobby desk and I nicked one on our way to the elevator."

"And why did you only take one emerald and not the lot," she asked. "You left behind a small fortune?"

The ocelot quietly cleaned the table next to theirs _, so they were both thieves_ he thought. He tried not to laugh when he heard the male raccoon answer. "Do I look like the greedy type?" he said with his paws on his chest in mock horror. "Besides, what we did was worth more than emeralds to me. I only took one to settle my debts."

Francisco looked away towards the street and rolled his eyes over that answer. As he was carrying the dirty dishes away he tried not to chuckle at her comeback.

"Aren't you the gentalmammal!" she sarcastically replied. "So tell me, how did you go from being a master burglar to a security consultant? They are quite opposite jobs."

"I never was a master burglar, I'd say I was mediocre at best," he chuckled. "I saw a limo being attacked by a gang of rhinos and saved its passenger, who turned out to be Mr. Big. He and I made a deal, so I ended up in this side of the business."

"Wait, you saved a notorious mobster from a gang of rhinos, how did you do that?" she skeptically asked.

"There was only one still standing when I got there and I had a big shovel," he replied. "Every mammal has a weak point, you just need to know where to strike and I did."

"Don't tell me that you're now in the mob?" she grumbled as she sat back and folded her arms on her chest. "Damn it Jake, I don't mess around with mobsters."

"No!" he snapped as he reached for her paw. "I told you I was legit now, no mob ties. I am however friends with Mr. Big and some of his associates, socially only."

"That's a fine line you're walking stud," Jasmine replied as she sat forward again. "Be careful!"

"You sound like my best friend's wife," he chuckled. "Judy said the same thing once, not long after she arrested me for punching her husband. She said that and also don't ever punch a cop again!"

"Wait, your best friend is a cop?" she laughed. "You are one messed up coon."

"Not only a cop, but a fox!" Jake chuckled. "He's Nick Wilde with the ZPD."

"You're friends with the Wildehopps?" she laughed. "The two that exposed the Night Howler plot and brought down two mayors? So here I sit with Jake Runnel, a former burglar who is now the bane of burglars, and his best friend is Nick Wilde, a former con-artist who is now the bane of con-artists."

The ocelot was surprised because the raccoon knew both mobsters and two of the city's most popular cops. He brought a new candle and place setting for the neighboring table and was about to ask if they would like desert, when the raccoon replied to her question.

"What can I say, I'm a complicated coon?" he answered as he pushed the last oyster over to her.

"I've had my three, that one is yours," she said.

"Good ahead, I hear they're an aphrodisiac!" he laughed as he comically wigged his eyebrows.

"Don't look so damn cute!" she giggled. Then she ran her tongue across the top of the oyster before she shucked it down. Daintily dabbing her muzzle with her napkin, she smiled at the male raccoon who was staring at her with his muzzle open. "Pay the check Stud, this tongue wants to lick something else."

Francisco knew that was his queue and swept in with the check, but as he tried to leave the male raccoon grabbed his arm and started shoving cash into his paw. "That's over twice the amount due," the ocelot protested.

"Keep the change," the raccoon chuckled. "We're in a hurry!" He stood and took her paw as she joined him. Slipping his arm around her waist, the two raccoons left the café and the ocelot heard her say as they were leaving, "I'll wait outside of the pharmacy while you…ah restock,"

When they reached the other side, they embraced and passionately kissed. Francisco glanced up and saw the male raccoon enter the pharmacy and the ocelot sighed, at least someone is going to have fun tonight. Walking inside, he cashed out the bill and smiled when he realized that the raccoon had given him quite a substantial tip. Suddenly, there was the squealing of tires and arguing. Francisco ran back out onto the patio, where several of the patrons were now standing and pointing. "They took her!" a sow yelled into her phone. "They grabbed her and threw her into a van! Yes officer, I saw the whole thing. She was with another raccoon and he's there right now."

He looked at the sow and then over at the raccoon, who was standing in the street in front of the pharmacy. The ocelot's ears went flat as he heard distance sirens. Then the raccoon cast a panic look towards him and ran.

Later as the police came over and questioned everyone who had witnessed the kitnapping. The patrol officer, a black bear by the name of Officer P. Jackson gave a sad nod when he told him he had overheard the male raccoon's name, it was Jake Runnel.

* * *

 **Authors Notes:**

 **Since this story takes place before the events of the adventure called Lost Mountain in** _ **Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption,**_ **Jake is still under probation after serving eighteen months in jail for burglary.**

 **In the story** _ **Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption**_ **,** _ **Chapter 1: A Fall from Grace,**_ **Jake saved both Koslov and Mr. Big from an assassination attempt by a Rhino street gang and in appreciation for his actions, Mr. Big found the raccoon a job as a security consultant. He now owns a small but successful security firm and lives in a suite at the four-star Regency Hotel, which Mr. Big owns through a shell corporation. Although he is friends with many in the mafia, Jake refuses to join the Family.**


	2. The Fox

**Chapter 2: The Fox**

 **The usually charming and debonair wisecracking fox has a bad evening, thanks to his best friend the raccoon. This story takes place about four years after the movie ended and Nick and Judy are married. Nick is eight years older than both Judy and Jake.**

* * *

Police Officer Nicholas Wilde let loose a string of such creative curses that he even caused his wife to blush, despite of where the fox's tongue was located on her body when his phone rang. "It's the office Slick, you had better answer!" she pouted as her naked husband reached for the phone. She couldn't help but admire his russet orange fur and creamy white chest, Nick was a muscularly lean and very attractive mammal.

"What!" the now enraged fox snapped at the caller. Judy cringed at her husband's anger and fervently hoped wasn't Chief Bogo on the other end. She sighed in relief when she heard the voice of Detective Ronald Oates. "Runnel's not here…No, I haven't heard from him since this afternoon…yeah a date." Nick said. Whatever he was told caused her husband to leap off the bed. "I'm heading to his place now!"

As he sat back on the edge of the bed, the fox ran his paw across his neck. The rabbit knew her husband only did this when he was worried. "Is Jake okay?" she asked.

"The coon was on a date tonight," Nick sighed. "His date was kitnapped right off the street downtown and the idiot ran from the cops. Oates says they have an APB on him for him and a warrant for his arrest. I always have said that he isn't the brightest bulb around!"

"An all-points bulletin?" Judy gasped. "Do they know who was kitnapped?"

Nick didn't reply, but was on his phone again. "Jake you asshole, call me!" he snapped. "This phone or the other…just call me."

"Other phone?" the rabbit asked. "You have two phones? Hey, why didn't you tell me?"

Nick walked over to the wall and moved his paw along the baseboard, carefully removing a section of the board and pulled out a phone. He walked to his desk and pulled out a battery and inserted it into the back of the phone and made a call. "Kevin this is Nick…sorry but its Jake, have you or any of the bears heard from him tonight…yeah, check around and also let him know. He witnessed a kitnapping and ran…APB for his arrest."

By the time the fox had pulled his pants on, Judy was fully dressed in her street uniform although she was still adjusting the dark blue impact plates. "I take it they've already checked Jake's suite at the Regency?" she asked.

"He wasn't there and Oates is delaying a search warrant for the suite. He said he'd let me get in there first, since I've got a key," Nick replied. "He said that he'd rather let me do some digging, just in case there are some questionable items present."

"Ron's a great guy," Judy said. "I was hoping to work with him again."

"Look Judy," Nick said as he pulled his dark blue patrol uniform shirt on. "I'm going into the suite alone. If there is something in there that may need to disappear, I don't want you involved."

"Jake is a good friend and your best friend," she replied as she stepped closer to the fox. "I'm not going to let either of you down."

He drew her into his embrace and stroked her creek with his paw, tenderly tracing along the scars left by another fox a long time ago. She looked up into his emerald eyes as he said, "Carrots…Judy you are my greatest best friend, my mate, and the love of my life." As they kissed, she felt his paw reaching over hers and then a click as he pawcuffed her to the bed's frame. "Sorry, I don't want you involved if this goes wrong.

She screamed some of the creative obscenities that she had heard him say earlier as he left, before sitting down to figure out how she was going to get free of the cuffs. "Sweet cheese and crackers!" she finally huffed in her frustration.

* * *

Nick slipped by the detective who was talking to the hotel's front desk clerk, she saw him entering the lobby. He held a digit to his muzzle and the black bear nodded before she asked Detective Oates a flirtatious question. With older equine's attention preoccupied, the fox stepped into the stairwell and went to Jake's room.

Opening the door to the suite, he knew that the key card would leave an electronic record of his entry, but he did not have time to resolve that problem. He looked around, there was no evidence that the raccoon had returned to the room since he left earlier. Quickly he looked for the companion to his emergency cellphone and found that it was still there, another indication his best friend had not returned home. With a sigh, Nick efficiently searched the rooms and finally satisfied that that his best friend did not have anything incriminating hidden, he opened the door.

Standing patiently in the hallway was Detective Oates who grinned as he asked, "Ah reckon it's safe for me to now enter?" the fox's ears went flat and he just nodded as the chestnut grey horse in the rumpled light grey suit pushed past him and into the room. Surprisingly, the horse took a seat on the couch and turned on the television.

"I thought you had a search warrant?" Nick asked. "Aren't you going to do a search?"

The detective grinned at him and chuckled, "Why? My partner already did a search and did he find anything that might lead us to the coon's whereabouts?"

Nick was flabbergasted as he sat down on the chair next to the couch. "Look, the ringtail fool hasn't been back here tonight," he replied. "He probably fell in a trashcan and can't get out, you know how raccoons are. I'm sure that there is a reasonable…"

"Officer Wilde," Oates said as he turned to face the fox. "You know Jake Runnel better than any other mammal and despite your unique history of being a pain in Bogo's ass, you've got a fair to middlin' reputation of being honest, so let me tell you what I think has happened. Your friend has a date with another raccoon who also has a record for being no good, but that's no crime. She is involved in something which is dangerous and is grabbed by unknown folks for a unknown reason. Now we cops are called and your buddy hears the sirens, he's on parole and knows he can easily end up in jail, so he just hightails it away. Hey, after all everyone knows raccoons are natural thieves, just like you foxes can't be trusted. I reckon we've covered all the stereotypes, so let's get back to digging up the truth."

Nick looked at the detective, but before he could respond the horse continued, "So now that we have searched the room, ah think it's time for you to up and tell me if we found anything beside that burner phone you have in your hip pocket?"

"No and that's my phone," Nick replied. "I always carry three."

"Of course it is and while I'm in the hallway, put it back," Oates said. "If Runnel does return, he may need it."

The horse left the room and waited in the hallway for the fox to join him. "We're done for the night, go home and hit the hay because I reckon this is only just beginning," the horse said. "I was expecting your filly to be with you. But seeing that she isn't and that you're also missing your pawcuffs, you might want to snatch up a few flowers on the way home."

As they entered the hotel lobby, the detective crossed over to the reception desk. "Well Trisha, I enjoyed jawing with you earlier," he said to the bear. "However in the future when you are up and trying to distract someone, make sure there ain't a mirror behind you. Also, your flirtatious comments, although much appreciated, were misplaced. First, I am old enough to be your grandsire. Second, you have a strand of white fur from a polar bear on your blue blazer in a spot indicating that you have been cottening up to someone special. And finally, ah reckon there's no way we could ever make it work out because you see honey, there's a reason why folks use the old saying of being hung like a horse."

Both the fox and the bear looked at the detective as he left the building. "Hung like a horse?" Trisha muttered.

"Don't look at me?" Nick shrugged. "I always just figured he was a country bumpkin, but I guess I was wrong."

"Is Jake in trouble?" she asked. "We haven't seen him since he left the hotel. He said he had a date with an old friend and might not be back until morning. I know it's not my place, but I was hoping he was going to hook up with the jackal."

"Melinda Velt, yeah I thought the same thing," Nick answered. "He said they were just friends."

"If anyone deserves to find happiness, it's that raccoon!" Trisha sighed. "I'll have him call you when he gets here. Hey, you know how bad he is with phones."

* * *

Nick slipped into the apartment as quietly as he could and ready himself for the inevitable confrontation with his wife Judy. But as he entered their bedroom, he saw that she had freed herself and was tucked under the sheets.

"Well Slick, you're finally home!" she said in a dangerously sweet tone. "Now come to bed, it's late and I'll hurt you in the morning."

"How?" he began to ask.

"You know how Jake is with his being able to undo any pair of cuffs? Surely you didn't think he wouldn't have taught me by now how to undo a simple pair of police pawcuffs?" she scoffed. "Granted, I don't have his claws and ruined a perfectly good nail file getting them open."

"But…" the fox began.

"Did you bring me flowers like Detective Oates suggested?" she continued. The fox's ears went flat as he just nodded. "He called and said he was disappointed that I wasn't there. He likes you, but said I must have married you for what's between your legs and not your ears. It seems you were so busy running around trying to make sure that there wasn't anything that he would find and you missed the fact the place had already been searched."

"Searched?" Nick almost whined.

"Not a word more Slick, now get undressed and into bed," she snapped at him. "I'm cold and missing your tail to keep me warm."

The fox stripped off his uniform and slipped into their bed, curling around her as she grabbed his tail and snuggled into his chest. "You know you love me?" he whispered.

"Do I? Why yes, yes I do!" she sleepily sighed.

As the content rabbit fell asleep, the fox just stared into the darkness. His emerald eyes betraying his concern, for out there in the night his best friend was running from heaven knows what.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

 **Kevin the polar bear in this story is younger and more affable then his movie counterpart, he is in his late twenties and a nephew of Koslov.  
**

 **Detective Ron Oates is with the Missing Mammals Division and is an older stallion who Judy idolizes. He is a based on the character from the game Zootopia: Crime Files.**

 **Jake met Melinda Velt a/k/a "Diamonds" in** _ **Zootopia: A Raccoon Redemption**_ **while tubing at the Winter Carnival in Tundratown, the cape jackal literally picked up the raccoon accidentally in her snow tube. They became close friends and lovers in** _ **Sins of Our Fathers.**_ **She is a insurance investigator who specializes in stolen gems, especially illegally smuggled diamonds from her war torn homeland. She would donate the reward money to the refugees.**

 **Nick worries about Jake, because the raccoon is on parole and any illegal action could cause it to be revoked. Although Jake has given up his former lifestyle, he did slip back to his old habit and burglarize a mansion owned by a sleazy businessmammal to steal some illegally obtained "blood diamonds" in** _ **Sins of Our Fathers**_ **. After realizing that Melinda couldn't turn them in for the reward, he broke back in and returned them. Melinda then tipped off the cops, who located them in a raid.**


	3. The Raccoon

**Chapter 3: The Raccoon**

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" The raccoon cursed as he stealthy climbed into a tree and with great agility, leapt onto the roof of a nearby building. _Why did I run?_ He thought to himself. _I didn't do anything wrong!_ He pulled out his phone and stared at it, _I need to call Nick and he'll know what to do! Wait, why did they snatch Jasmine and am I a target too? If I get around Nick and Judy, they might get them to get at me, so maybe I should call Bogo? No, he would toss me in jail, if Jasmine lied and is involved with something illegal, they will pull my probation. Maybe I need to call Manny, he's my attorney and should know what to do._ Looking at his phone again, he groaned because it was dead, he had forgotten to recharge it. Leaning back against the building's side, he groaned again.

 _So I wait it out up here while the cops do a search for me, then I slip down to the ground and buy a burner phone._ Reaching into his pocket, he felt sick when he realized he only had five dollars left in cash. "Shithead!" he mumbled to himself, "You gave the waiter most of your cash. At my age I should be thinking with what's between my ears and not what's between my legs!" He had a credit card, but he knew it would leave a cyber trail that marked where he was when he used it.

He pulled his legs tighter to his chest, he was scared. Scared not only by the kitnapping, but that he had gotten too comfortable with his new life. _I need to go home, back to where I belong, back to River Street. I've still got cash hidden down there and Jerry and the girls will hide me, at least until I can figure this out. Mrs. Ling sells burner phones in her store and she sells charger cords too!_

Jake was a child of the streets, he grew in the economically depressed old mill town area of the city ironically called Happy Town. Both his mother and twin brother died when he was born, leaving him to be raised by his father. As a raccoon, he was expected to follow his father into a job with the city's sanitation department or some similar blue collar job, if he didn't become a thief. Instead, he went to college to earn an engineering degree, but he had to drop out after his father was killed by a drunk driver.

He watched the cops do a routine search for him and finally calling in, they left. _Thank the Lamb they didn't bring in the K-9 team, those wolves would sniff me down in a heartbeat! Okay, it's clear all I have to do is find a bus down to River Street._ Leaping from the rooftop into the tree, he grunted as he hit a branch and almost fell. Keeping to the shadows he made his way towards the nearest bus stop, flattening against a wall when a police car drove by. He cursed as he read the bus schedule, three transfers before he could get to the safety of River Street.

He hid in the bushes, waiting for his first bus. Finally it pulled up and he leapt down, startling the elderly armadillo exiting the bus. Climbing aboard, he handed the driver his cash. "Its two fifty to ride and I can't make change," the warthog said.

"Can I get a transfer for the next bus?" Jake asked.

"Nope, no transfers anymore without a Zoocard," the driver replied. "You can get them at a station or online."

The raccoon sighed as he sat down in a seat. "Yeah, sure stick it to the working stiff!" he mumbled.

"Sorry pal, I don't make the rules!" the driver shrugged. "With that suit, I wouldn't have taken you for a working Joe anyways."

"Looks can be deceiving," the raccoon grumbled. He looked out the window as the bus rumbled down the road. He ducked when a police cruiser passed by, a move that didn't go unnoticed by the driver.

"You in trouble coon?" the driver asked. "Are you ducking from the cops? Not to be speciesist, but you are a coon and since you don't look like a typical blue collar guy, I would guess you're running from the law."

"Just trying to get home," Jake sighed.

"I take it home isn't near the station?" a possum asked as he sat down behind the raccoon. "Not many places that let our kind live around here, you heading home to HT?"

"Happy Town?" Jake scoffed. "I've done my best to get out of that hell hole."

"Hey, HT is home for me and my family," the possum replied. "Home is where you make it my friend. It's where family is found, so where is your family?"

"I don't have any family," Jake answered. "It's just me by myself."

"Look coon, family isn't always blood kin," the driver said. "It can be you friends, you know those who love you, so again where's your home?"

"River Street," Jake replied. "Yeah, my home is River Street with its flop houses, hookers, strippers, bars, and street folk."

"Huh, I never would have of figured that from the way you're dressed," the possum said. "Look take my card, it still has about four more rides left on it and Greg can do I transfer on it. I was going to get a new one anyways."

Jake looked down at the card the possum had handed him. "I can't.." he began.

"Yes you can and one day when you get your life straight, pass it on to the next guy," the possum chuckled. "It was given to me when I was broke and trying to get home by an old bear one night, now it is yours until you don't need it anymore. Just pass it on, okay?"

When they reached the station, the warthog grabbed Jake's arm. "Look coon, take care and I hope you stay ahead of whomever you're running from."

"Yeah, I'm running for now," Jake replied. "But once it get my shit straight, they'll be running from me."

The driver shook his head as he watched the raccoon walk into the station.

"Hey pal," a cop yelled up to him. "Have you seen this coon?" the zebra held a photo of the raccoon.

"What did he do?" the driver asked.

"They say he witnessed a kitnapping and ran," the zebra snorted. "He's a coward."

The driver pondered the cop's words and those the raccoon had said, he knew the coon wasn't a coward. "Naw," he yelled back to the cop. "I just drive and I don't remember seeing a cowardly coon."

The coon looked down the street, this was River Street and its bright neon lights advertising strip joints, adult establishments, night clubs, liquor stores and seedy rundown motels beckoned him. The homeless and drug addicts mingled with partygoers and prostitutes. This was home for Jake, he had come here poor and emotionally broken and it was here he was tempted into his former career as a burglar. But it was also where he found friendships with the ladies of the street and their pimp, who watched the street for the Northern Mob out of Tundratown. Sure there was some crime found here, mostly scams or pickpocketing, but the mob didn't tolerate any real violent crime. The merchants expected to pay for this service and most did willingly, because the street was safer than any patrolled by the city's police. The mob's enforcers didn't worry about your so called "civil rights" and due process was found in the form of a one way icy swim.

"Well look who came a visiting?" a muscular snow leopard laughed. "I hope you brought a lot of cash, coon. We still have to settle your debt for you and Meredith's little mistake. You two know the rules, no unprotected sex and still you two did it."

"I'm in trouble Jerry," Jake replied to the pimp in the jeans and red jacket, the big cat's gold chains glittered in the light of the street lamps. "I need someplace to lie low for a few hours and get my shit straight."

"You serious?" the cat asked. "I thought you were a high roller, gone legit? Who's after you?"

"I'm not sure, but I think they might be the same ones who killed little Sandy all those years ago," the raccoon replied. "I was with an old friend who said Sandy took something, hid it and they killed her for it. They snatched my friend off the street downtown and I ran."

"Shit coon, I saw what they did to Sandy," Jerry replied. "Let's get you in a room, what do you need?"

"Phone cord and a burner phone for a start," Jake replied as the cat was directing him towards a motel room.

"Yeah, sure and I'm gonna call Snarloff too," Jerry replied. "The boss was pissed when they killed Sandy down here in his territory, yeah he will have to know too."

"Look Jerry, I don't want to drag you in on this," Jake objected.

"Jake, you lived on these streets," the cat said. "I remember when you showed up all down and out, just a scrawny kit. You came here broke and screwed up between the ears, one step above being just another bum. But, the ladies took a liking to you right away, hell they saw something in you that I didn't see at first. Then you started pulling some jobs and making some cash, generously spending it on the ladies. We became friends before they busted you and sent you upstate to the pen, but we never gave up on you even then. No, you're one of us and we take care of each other."

Jake finally relaxed, he was safe for now. Sitting in his seedy and worn out motel room, he began to mull his actions. _Okay, I ran from a crime scene but that's no major crime. First I call Manny and find out what I need to do. Now let's figure out why they snatched Jasmine and where they have her. She said that she was staying at the Radishton Inn Downtown, I would guess under an assumed name. What name did she use last time?_

He sat up when he heard a light knock on the door, reaching for his telescoping taser baton that he always carried strapped to his leg, he tensed and prepared to leap at the potential assailant. He sprung from the bed as the door opened and landed in the arms of a familiar highland wildcat.

"Oof! Get off me boyo, it's grand to see you again," Meredith said, her borough was music to his ears. "Now simmer down laddie, I just came to see if you were okay and Jerry said no romping until you two sort out payment for last time." The raccoon didn't answer as he held her. "Jakie are you okay?"

Jake held her tight, she smelled of sex and cheap perfume. He inhaled her scent and sighed because whore or not, she was his friend and he loved her almost like a sister. His mouth found hers and they kissed. Breaking their kiss, he looked into her green eyes and said, "I've missed you."

"Ach, I've missed you too Jakie, you're too tense!" she almost purred.

"No romping is what Jerry said," he replied in a husky voice.

Her paw was on his belt buckle and soon both his pants and undershorts were on the floor as she knelt. "He said no romping, this isn't romping," she giggled. Jake moaned as her mouth greedily encompassed the portion of his body she was seeking.

He was buckling his belt back on when Jerry returned, "Damn I can't keep you two apart and what did I say about not having sex with him until he pays?"

"We didn't have sex," Meredith replied. "And I'm on break."

"Breaks over, you've got paying customers waiting," the snow leopard growled. "Wash your face before you go, you've got raccoon jazz on the side of your muzzle."

"Ah, put that on my tab?" Jake offered.

"You are trying my patience coon," Jerry snapped. "Once we get things settled, you're paying."

"I sure that Mr. Runnel is more than willing to make whatever restitution is required," a voice spoke from behind.

Both Jake and Jerry turned to face the slim deadly looking arctic wolf standing outside the room, he was dressed in a stylish black three piece suit with a light blue shirt and a burgundy tie. Boris Snarloff was one of the Northern Mafia's caporegimes and greatly feared on the streets.

"I saw Meredith on my way up, is she still one of your top producers?" the wolf asked.

Looking at Jake, the cat replied, "She is very popular with a certain species."

"Good, now I'm sure that you have other duties to attend to while Mr. Runnel and I have a conversation," Snarloff replied. As the muscular snow leopard began to leave, the wolf added, "Oh and Jerry, we are pleased with your street's productivity."

Jake wanted to chuckle at the pleased look on his friend's face and the slight twitch of his tail.

"Now Mr. Runnel, you're antics have concerned my boss and even more importantly, his daughter," Snarloff said as he paced into the room. He frowned at the room's condition, choosing to stand instead of sitting in the ratty chair. "So what exactly is going on?"

"The lady I was having dinner with is looking for a special stone, which was smuggled over here years ago by her cousin Sandy Pondstone," Jake began. "She was killed here on River Street, probably by the same group who kitnapped my friend."

"Sandy's real name was Sister Amanda of the Covent of the Holy Light," the wolf said. "She was one of handful of survivors who fled their island during that holy order's massacre. We never determined who killed her, but we are certain that it was connected with the previous attack on her convent. As few days ago another member of the order was brutally murdered in the same fashion over near the docks."

"I have to find Jasmine," Jake almost pleaded. "I've got to save her before it's too late!"

Snarloff shook his head, "It may already be too late, but we will ask around. Manny Molelinger will be here in the morning, you are to do what he tells you. Fortunately you haven't committed any substantial crimes, fleeing from the authorities is not much more than a misdemeanor."

The raccoon wearily sat back down on the bed.

"You owe Jerry money?" Snarloff asked. "I would suggest you take care of that issue soon. You may be a friend of the boss's, but business is business."

Jake sighed, "You know I'm good for it."

"Is this about Meredith?" Snarloff asked. "What are your intentions towards her? I would hate to lose a lady with her talents, but she has completed her contractual obligations and is now free to leave if she wishes."

"Meredith?" Jake replied. "We're just friends."

The wolf nodded and began leaving. "Oh and Jake," the wolf said as he paused before leaving the room. "Be careful who you trust, especially the cops. Someone purposely botched the investigation of Sister Amanda's murder."

In the now quite darkness, Jerry made his way to the roof top and sat next to the wolverine who was watching the raccoon's room across the street. Peering into his phone, he yawned and whispered, "It's three in the morning Murray, time for me to call it a night."

Murray chuckled at the snow leopard before he answered, "Everything seems normal. Yep and there she goes, right into his room!"

Jerry peered over the building's edge and saw the wildcat slipping into the raccoon's room. "She's on her own time now and if those two want to rut the rest of the night away, let them," he sighed.

Jake had heard her whisper at the door and watched as she entered the room, stripping off her dress and crawling under the sheet. His arms reached for her body and she snuggled against his chest as she gave a cute yawn. He kissed her between her ears before they both nodded off into sleep.

 **Author's Notes**

 **Jake grew up in Happy Town, which is an old mill town which was encompassed by Zootopia. It is an economically depressed area of the city mostly inhabited by predators. He was living there with his father and commuting to attend the university. (** _ **Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption)**_

 **Meredith and Jake got a little overexcited after he stole Nick's handcuffs in** _ **Sins of Our Fathers**_ **and broke the rules.**


	4. The Rabbit

**Chapter 4: The Rabbit**

* * *

Judy was still mad with her fox when she arrived at the station, sure he tried his best to first justify his actions and then apologize. He even tried that cute whimpering he did when he wanted his way, after all it worked on her before, but not this time. But Nick being Nick, he then tried to use humor to get his way, but it didn't work either. Finally he sadly followed behind her with his ears droopy and his tail dragging behind him.

Silently, they sat together in their usual chair, she was quite aware of the other officers staring at the two of them in surprise. The others were so use to the fox cracking a joke or two, but today he looked at the door. "Nick must be really worried about his buddy Runnel," Delgato said to Anderson. "He hasn't said a word, not even a snide remark yet." The polar bear nodded at the lion.

"Ten hut!" Corporal Higgins bellowed as Chief Bogo entered the room and then the hippo made his way to his chair.

The large cape buffalo in the dark blue open collared uniform shirt with four brass stars on each collar looked around at the oddly silent room. "Sit!" he sighed. "Let's get straight to business, last night we had a kitnapping of a raccoon named Stephanie LeFure, also known as Jasmine. There is an APB issued for Jake Runnel as a witness because he left the scene of the crime…"

"Maybe if you offered a reward, you might catch him," a voice said from the doorway. "Is this a good time to say I surrender?" The raccoon waked into the room, only to be engulfed in fox and rabbit hugs. "Now that's the way to be apprehended!" he chuckled.

"Oh, no you ringtailed menace, we need to have a conversation about your disappearing act," snapped the fox at him. "I was about to lead a dragnet of all the trash bins in the city to make sure your scrawny hide wasn't stuck in one."

"What's with the coon and trash jokes? I just did that once..." Jake began to reply, but he never finished because he was cut off by the bellow of an angry buffalo.

"Runnel, where have you been?" Bogo yelled. The raccoon turned towards him and raised a paw, but before he could answer, the bull snorted. "Wilde, sit down and shut up. As for you raccoon, just go down and wait for me in interrogation room A, I'm sure you can find it since you've been there several times.

Nick shot the buffalo an annoyed look but realizing he couldn't win this argument, he sat down and gave his superior a smirk, "Sure Chief, this is me sitting down and shutting up. Yep, I'm shutting up just like you want."

The chuckles and gaffs from the other officers were cut off by the large bovine's icy stare. "Fangmeyer and Wolford, I want you to call Oates and the three of you interrogate Runnel."

"But sir we're investigating a murder!" Fangmeyer objected.

"I have a bad feeling this missing raccoon and the dead raccoon are somehow related," he grumbled. "Afterwards met Hopps and Wilde to compare notes, their case has to be related. I think the fox should be done in the filing in the Records room by then!"

"Hey it shouldn't take me long to do the filing," Nick sarcastically added. "Everyone knows foxes can't spell!" Several officers chuckled at the fox.

"Hey Wilde!" Johnson roared, "I think you meant foxes just smell!" The cops bust out laughing.

Nick sighed and replied, "Listen mangy, we all know you can't tell the truth because if you did, you wouldn't be a lyin' anymore." There were only groans following that joke.

"Ahem," a voice cut unto the conversation. "Since you are unsure of your filing skills, perhaps you would prefer parking duty again?" Bogo said. "And now that Officer Wilde has shut up, lets get to today's assignments."

* * *

Judy was leaving the meeting room after roll call was over and heard Jake's voice down the hallway. _Of course he didn't do what he was supposed to do,_ she thought. Walking into the lobby, she found the raccoon talking to Benjamin Clawhauser. "Jake, you're supposed to be the interrogation room," she told him.

"You know my client, Officer Hopps," Judy heard a voice from atop of the desk. A mole in a black suite peered down at her through his thick glasses. "He doesn't always do what he is told, but if he did he wouldn't have need of my services."

"I'm sorry counselor, I didn't realize you were up there," she apologized. "There are officers waiting for him…"

"Runnel!" the cape buffalo bellowed. "Why are you in the lobby and not the interrogation room?"

"Just picking up my attorney," the raccoon tried to bellow back as he offered a paw to the mole.

"Where's Officer Wilde?" the mole asked.

"Yeah, I need to talk to you both about Sandy's murder," the raccoon added.

"He's in records and I'm heading back to my desk," Judy sighed. "Fang will catch us up latter."

"Nope!" the raccoon snapped to his attorney. "I get you too or nothing on the murder!"

"Jake, you know it dosen't work that way," she sighed as she left him to go to her cubicle.

She had just sat down at her desk when her phone rang, "Get your folder and get down here now!" Bogo yelled.

Gripping the folder, she ran into the interrogation room to find the raccoon standing on the desk and trying to angrily stare down the cape buffalo. "I plead the Fifth!" the raccoon growled.

"Mr. Runnel, please sit down," the mole sighed. "You're a witness and not being charged, so you are not incriminating yourself." The the mole adjusted his glasses and asked in a worried voice, "You are not going to incriminate yourself, right?"

"Jake, every minute you're wasting is the longer it's going to take before we can figure out where your friend is being held and why!" Fangmeyer sighed as he stepped by the buffalo and the coon.

"Shit!" Jake snapped "I already know why!

"SIT!" Judy yelled at the raccoon, who looked down at her before finding his seat. "NOW TALK!"

Wolford tried to suppress a snicker as he looked at the raccoon's face.

"They want the damn stone that Jasmine came to find for her government," Jake said. "It's called the Serpents Stone and its black quartz. I'm unsure why it's worth killing others for, because even black quartz isn't that rare."

"Who did they kill?" Fangmeyer asked. "And who is who?"

"You got the file?" Jake asked and Judy looked up at the buffalo before she handed it to the raccoon. The Chief just nodded and so she pushed it over to Jake. He opened the file and took out the photo of the young raccoon, sadly running his paw along her image. "She said her name was Sandy Pondstone from the islands and she was just a kit. She came to River Street to get away from her abusive father is what she told us…damn just a kit. Jer…I mean the pimp wouldn't let her work the streets because she was too young. So instead the ladies paid her to run errands, you know get me a bottle of water or something like that." He held her photo closer and choked out, "Raped her too!"

Setting the photo down, he sighed and wiped his eyes with his paw. "I was in jail when she died and heard the story, but it's still hard to believe. Beaten, raped, and strangled to death…"

"Wait!" Fangmeyer interjected. "You mean she was dead when they crucified and gutted her?"

"That's not what the records say?" Judy added. "She died on that wall."

"No she didn't!" Wolford snapped. "Jake's correct, she was dead when they hammered the nails into her. I was there, I sniffed out the body! There wasn't enough blood."

Fangmeyer pulled out a photo of another older raccoon, who was also crucified and sat it next to the photo. "You're right!" he exclaimed. "Why doesn't the older case file say that?"

"Is that the associate from Sister Amanda's Convent, the one Jasmine was supposed to meet?" Jake asked.

"Who's Sister Amanda?" Judy asked.

"That's Sandy's real name," Jake answered.

"Anyone else confused?" Manny spoke up. "I thought you were taking a statement from my client concerning the kitnapping? Are you going to charge him with anything, Chief?"

"I was going to charge him with leaving the scene of a crime," Bogo replied. "That was before this happened, so the answer is now no."

"Then gentlemammals, since my client does not seem to need my professional assistance I will bid you all good day," the mole said. "As for you Mr. Runnel, please don't incriminate yourself."

"Sure Manny," Jake absentmindedly answered as he was looking at the two photos.

"Fangmeyer you're in charge," Bogo grunted as he offered the attorney his hoof. "Keep me updated."

"Those are police files," the tiger said to the raccoon who was reading both. As he tried to reach for the photos, Jake swatted at his paw.

"So both were tortured, raped, and strangled?" Jake said to Judy. "Then taken elsewhere and nailed to a wall and gutted. But why use metal knives laid out like claws?" Jake asked.

"The report doesn't say that the claws are metal," the rabbit replied. "How do you know they were metal?"

"The skin is cut deep without being torn," Jake pointed out. "Sliced too neatly, claws can't do that.

Putting the photos down, Jake looked at the rabbit and she heard his heartbeat increase. "Jake are you okay?" she asked.

"Sorry but it just hit me that these are two dead raccoons," he replied, he had a strange look. "I'm sitting here clinically staring at the bodies of two mammals brutally murdered and all I can think is how it was done. I think I'm going to be sick."

"Breath through you nose and out your mouth slowly," Fangmeyer suggested, then watching the raccoon as he hopped off the chair and ran for the trash, he added, "And there he goes, so much for breakfast!"

The raccoon barfed again and moaned over the trash bin. "How do you do it?" he weakly asked the officers. "To see death like this and not get sickened?"

"We get sickened," Judy replied. "Sick to our stomachs often, but we have to find out why and who did it."

Wolford had left the room and returned with a bottle of water for the raccoon. "Rinse you mouth out and then sip," he said. "You think photos are bad, try sniffing down cadavers."

"I'll pass with the sniffing," Jake weakly chuckled. "Sorry guys, I've seen dead mammals before, mostly junkies who OD or street bums who passed away. You see a lot living on the streets, but I've just never seen one of my own kind so brutally murdered. We've got to find Jasmine, I don't want her to die like that!"

"Neither one of the autopsies indicate the claws were metal. At least Cathy's autopsy does confirm that the victim was decreased before she was crucified and gutted. There are traces of semen, but also lubricant from several types of condoms. She has drugs in her system, along with smoke and the body was sprayed with rum. Cathy thinks rum was spit upon the victim, but the DNA from the spitter or spitters is inconclusive," Fangmeyer said.

"This older autopsy doesn't look right?" Judy added as she set the document down and compared it to the newer murder. "Clawhauser said it was one of the files erased online by a hacker who breached the police database, so all we had is the written reports."

Fangmeyer looked down at the two files, "So we have two murdered raccoons and another kitnapped."

The door opened and a sad faced horse wearing a heavily rumpled light grey suit entered the room. "I reckon, there's no reason to beat around the bush with you Mr. Runnel," Detective Ron Oats said as he looked down at the raccoon. "I need you to identify a body."

Jake looked up at the detective in shock, "You mean…?

The horse nodded his head and sighed.


	5. The Horse

**Chapter 5: The Horse**

 **Detective Ronald Oates locates the missing raccoon and finds himself being pulled into the case. Jake talks about his past relationship with Jasmine.**

* * *

His stomach roiled as he leaned against the wall of the warehouse in Little Amir, after over twenty years of working in the Detective Bureau's Missing Mammals Division, Detective Ronald Oates was still shaken by scenes like this. Frantically, he dug around in the pockets of his rumpled light grey suit jacket for something to suck on as a way to fight the overwhelming urge to smoke. It had been years since the weather looking chestnut brown stallion had promised his now deceased wife that he would give up the cigarettes, but he still fought the urges at times like these. Finding a toothpick, he shoved it with a sigh between his teeth as he watched the CSI team do their job. _What kind of bastard would kill another animal like this,_ he pondered. Taking another glance at the raccoon's body he knew that she had been dead by the time he and Wilde had searched Runnel's suite. He also knew she had been killed before they brought her body here to the warehouse.

He walked outside and deeply inhaled the cool early morning air, the city was already coming to life as the monks hurried to opened the small temple down the road. He caught scents unique to Little Amir, the smell of the popular breakfast dish of stir-fried bamboo shoots and lemon grass perfumed the air causing his stomach to now rumble. It felt like it had been ages since he ate that hay burger for lunch yesterday. _Where is Jake Runnel_ , he thought to himself. _If he is smart, the coon probably fled to the relative safety of River Street, his old home before he saved a reputed mafia boss. The little guy should be okay there because no one in their right mind messed with the mob family which controls that area, especially after the murder of Sandy Pondstone all those years ago._ Then it occurred to him that she had died in almost the same manner as this victim, making this the third such murder of a raccoon that he knew of. He sighed again because he knew his role in this case had come to an end and it would now be taken over by a detective with the Homicide Division, unless Chief Bogo assigns it to his Special Task Force, a group of hoofpicked detectives, street cops, and K9 officers. Great Lion above, he hoped he did because he had seen what had happened during the Pondstone investigation. Bogo had been bullied from above on that one and it went horribly wrong.

The horse's phone rang and it was Clawhauser with the First. "Hey Ben…he's there? Tell Bogo to keep him there…yeah, another one…let me talk to the big guy…" He frowned as Cordova arrived from homicide, _why Cordova?_ The horse was startled when Bogo answered. "Cordova's here now… ya'll know I'm a missing mammals guy…I know…keep an eye on Cordova?...okay?... got it and then I'm on my way."

He looked at the other detective, who was now on the phone with a panicked look on his muzzle. _What's that about?_ The puma hung up a glowered at him before he pulled out another phone and made a hasty call as he walked away. A few moments later the detective returned and approached him.

"It's your case now Ron and good luck," he snapped as he walked towards his car.

 _He's upset, but its more then losing a case?_ Oates thought. _The guy is in a panic, why? I never trusted Cordova and really didn't know why, it's just he screwed up too many cases. Wasn't he on the Pondstone case?_ Something was going on with the CSI team too, a couple investigators were leaving in a huff. _Bogo is shaking up things across the board._ Running a hoof through his mane, he approached the remaining members of the team, who looked as puzzled as he felt. "Times like this I sure miss Detective Inspector Robert Oakley," he muttered to himself, but the Inspector was gone and had disappeared after they forced him into retirement just before the Missing Mammals and Night Howler cases exploded.

The detective stuck around for at least an hour more, ensuring everything was being accounted for and that the body was finally being transported by the coroner to the police lab for an autopsy. Climbing into his unmarked police car, he cranked it up and pulled out into the sluggish morning traffic which was heading downtown towards the heart of the city.

* * *

 _Great Lamb Above this shit sucks!_ He thought as he sipped the coffee or at least the swill that the coffee vending machine in the First Precinct tried to pass off as coffee, as he chewed on a granola bar. After washing his face and running his hooves through his mane, he felt a little better. Long hours and lack of sleep was not unusual for a detective, after all time is not a luxury for a cop working in the Missing Mammal Division. Besides, since his wife had passed he hadn't really slept very well anyways. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out one of the straw steams he kept in the car and sucked on it as he made his way to the interrogation room.

 _Okay, what do I know about Runnel from his file? Only child, born in Happy Town twenty-eight years ago, mother dead at birth, raised by his father who was killed by a hit and run. Kit did his damnedest to get a college degree and then things financially and spiritually crashed for him after his dad died. He ended up living in a River Street flophouse and then he became a fair burglar. A lot of suspicion that he pulled a few jobs, but never pinned down until he got caught hitting a auction house. Records say an anonymous tip led the cops to the crime, so it was a set up. He served eighteen months upstate and is still on probation. After his release, he saved a wealthy businessmammal from an attempted assassination by a gang of rhinos. He brought down their leader Ronnie Charger single-handedly, that SOB is tough so the little guy knows some of the martial arts._

The detective drained his coffee and tossed the cup into the trash, and then sticking the straw back between his teeth, he continued his mental review of the raccoon's file. _Currently runs a small security consulting firm, so he's staying clean. He still has friends on River Street, a few cops have seen him down there. Lately he's mostly been seen around Nick Wilde and his wife Judy. Heh, they're calling those two Wildehopps now in the press. I've heard that Runnel is popular with the other cops too because he often treats them at the local watering hole, what is its name? Oh yeah, the Green Dragon Pub. Until recently he's been hooking up with that insurance investigator, the jackal. So the guy doesn't have a history of being violent, he's just a former thief._

Oates hesitated at the room's door, still preparing himself before he confronted the raccoon. _So why was he having dinner with a known jewel smuggler? If that waiter is correct the two raccoons were heading back to her place for a night of sex, in fact he was buying a box of condoms when she was snatched. So were they just old friends or was she looking for his help too? Why did they kill her that way?_

He opened the door and looked into the room and took stock of who was within. _Sargent Richard Fangmeyer, who is a competent detective. K9 officer Alan Wolford, great nose but better brain and should be a detective by now, the ZPD always underestimates their wolves. Of course Judy Hopps, she has the making of a great detective despite being held back her husband's unprofessional attitude. Where was the fox and why isn't he here with his friend?_

The door opened and a sad faced horse wearing a heavily rumpled light grey suit entered the room. "I reckon, there's no reason to beat around the bush with you Mr. Runnel," Detective Ron Oats said as he looked down at the raccoon. "I need you to identify a body."

Jake looked up at the detective in shock, "You mean…?

The horse nodded his head and sighed.

He watched as Judy came over and hugged the raccoon. There were tears in his eyes as he looked up at the horse. "How?" was all he could croak out.

"Same as the others," Oates sighed.

The raccoon grimly sat down at the table with his paws on his head. "Jake…" Judy began to say something, but the look in her friend's eyes made her hesitate.

"Little Sandy, the nun, and now Jasmine!" he growled as he slammed his paws on the table. "They're all dead, but why? Who wants that damn stone so bad? Three raccoons dead!"

"What stone?" Detective Oats asked. He held a hoof up, when Fangmeyer began to speak. "Let's start this from the beginning."

"I already told this to the other guys!" the raccoon grumbled.

"I don't care," the horse said as he took a seat next to the raccoon. "We ain't up and going nowhere until I hear your story, so start jawing. The waiter said ya'll know each other, so I reckon you can start there."

"My attorney said not to incriminate myself," Jake said. "Would stealing from a smuggler, be a crime?"

"Yep," Oates replied. "So Party A is the thief and Party B is the smuggler. I'm only interested in the murder, not some old smuggling case."

"Okay… okay, I first met Jasmine, shit I mean Party A met Party B was when she came to the city while smuggling some emeralds," he began. "I had overheard some of the guys at a bar downtown talking about the deal and since I was financially in need of some quick cash, I decided that this might be an easy heist."

"No honor among thieves," Fangmeyer chuckled. The horse threw the younger tiger a look and so he shut up.

"She was an independent, just like me," Jake continued. "No mob ties and no chance it would get reported to the cops. So my plan was to just wait and sneak in when she wasn't aware and swipe the whole lot, but that is until I saw her. For a raccoon, she was exotic and classy. I mean most raccoons are like my Pop was, blue collar folks and not exactly sophisticated. Damn, I meant Party A and Party B not me and Jasmine!"

Judy cringed as the raccoon said that and looked over at the horse, who winked at her.

"I'm not saying raccoons aren't good mammals, but you don't exactly meet many of us hanging out at the Savoy Restaurant downtown," the raccoon chuckled. "Anyways, Part A ah…borrowed…a nice suit and with what little cash I had left, went downtown and hung out at the restaurant's bar. When she arrived for dinner, I must have caught her eye and she came over and sat at the bar too. It was then I smelled her and despite the perfume, I knew she was starting to go into heat."

"Oh geeze!" Wolford grunted.

"Yeah, that's why my plan changed from sneak thief to seducer," the raccoon chuckled. He apparently had forgotten about Party A and Party B again. "I was the only raccoon in the bar, hell in the whole restaurant. Anyways, I worked my way over to her and began to charm her and we began this back and forth full of innuendos. Finally, she was overwhelmed by my charms…"

"Or drunk and in heat," the wolf chuckled.

"Exactly!" the raccoon grinned. "I paid our bill, which took my last penny and made our way to her hotel room, after I ducked into the store and ah…procured a box of condoms. Then we…"

"Ya'll had a roll in the hay, got it!" Detective Oats interjected. "I take it you lifted the jewels?"

"Just one, that's all," Jake replied. "She hid her stash in a really creative spot that I had trouble finding…wait she told me she had letter from her cousin! She didn't have it when we met at the café, did you search her hotel room?"

"It was trashed when we got there," Fangmeyer answered. "We didn't find anything unusual in the mess. They went as far as pulling the mirror off the wall, to look behind it."

"Huh, but I guess they didn't find what they were looking for either?" the raccoon sighed.

 _He's hiding something,_ Oates thought as he watched the raccoon and caught the slight twitch of his tail's tip. _This poor boy must be a lousy poker player._

"So they up and tossed the stables looking for the papers," he drawled out as he shifted the wheat straw between his teeth. Detective Oates had always played the part of the unassuming hick from the countryside, it had a tendency to get other mammals to underestimate him. His homespun mannerisms also got others to relax and freely talk, but it wasn't working on the raccoon.

He was about to challenge the raccoon, but the Judy looked at her friend with frustration. Her nose was twitching as she reached over and lightly pulled the raccoon's ear, "Spill it Jake! She hid it in the wall's baseboard, right."

"Ow! Police brutality!" the raccoon protested. Then looking at the rabbit, he sighed and replied, "She may have, that's were she hid the jewels that night. Did you search the baseboard?"

"No!" Fangmeyer answered. "No one thought about that. I'll call and have it checked out."

"You'll go and do it yourself," Oates suddenly said. "Something is chaffing my tail on this here case, so it'll be best if ya'll two go and do it."

When the tiger was about to protest, the wolf cut in, "He's right, I saw Sandy Pondstone's file and I think I want to go look myself."

"Let me go too!" the raccoon said, almost in a desperate voice. "Somehow I've got the feeling that I need to shut up before Detective Oates has me confessing to something I didn't want him to know."

"Ya'll ain't going anywhere Mr. Runnel until ya'll tell me what you two said to each other last night word for word." the horse said. "Then we're trotting over to the coroner's."

The raccoon's ears went flat and his tail slipped between the chair legs before he said, "But in front of Judy?"

The detective looked down at Judy and asked, "Where the hell's your mate? If this here was my best bud, I'd be kickin' the door to get in!"

"He's in Records," the rabbit sighed as her ears drooped. "He's being punished for something he said to the Chief yesterday morning."

"Shootfire, I heard he had a problem keeping his pie hole shut," the detective chuckled.

"He's not the only one," Jake grumbled. "Party A isn't as smart as I used to think he was."


	6. The Cheetah

**Chapter 6: The Cheetah**

 **Bogo is up to something as he sends Ben downstairs to his least favorite room, the Records Archive.**

* * *

Benjamin Clawhauser was a bit of a social butterfly and a gossip, you never told anything to the pudgy cheetah that you didn't want to get around the station. He was also a fanatical fan of the pop star Gazelle and was listening to her latest release as he sat at the police station's oversized reception desk. He had spent first part of the morning talking with Jake Runnel and his lawyer Manny Moleinger, both of who were not strangers to the precinct.

The cheerful cheetah liked Jake because the raccoon was always enjoyable to talk to and brought donuts when he came by the station. He especially liked the persimmon jelly filled donuts that Jake got from a bakery in Sahara Square. Ben knew Jake even before the raccoon went to jail, because Jake was always being hauled in for questioning about a burglary or two but never charged. Then there was that time they locked him up overnight during an investigation, he had picked the cell's lock and Bogo found him the next morning in the break room at the coffee machine. You could hear the cape buffalo's bellow in the parking lot. The little guy has a way with locks and police pawcuffs, he used to love to annoy Fangmeyer by quickly picking, removing, and handing back the tiger's cuffs. He also absolutely hates muzzles, a requirement for all arrested predators to wear and raccoons are a Class C Predator. One time when they had cuffed and muzzled him as they brought him in for questioning, he picked the pawcuffs, removed the muzzle, unlocked the secured patrol cruiser's door and tossed the muzzle out of the moving vehicle, all within a few minutes.

It wasn't unusual to see Jake and Nick Wilde together, they had become close friends. Ben even joked to Judy that the two were like brothers, with the smaller and younger raccoon following the taller older red fox around. The two met the same day that Jake had saved Mr. Big from an assassination attempt by a rhino gang, the raccoon had knocked out the last remaining much larger rhino. He had used an oversized shovel that he had grabbed from a nearby work site to hit the rhino between his legs and then to beat him at least a dozen times behind the beast's head. "Pressure points," he once told Ben, "You just need to know where to hit him." When the raccoon had gone to check on the businessmammal's bodyguard, the polar bear passed out on top of him and it was after they hauled the bear off the raccoon that he punched the fox in the muzzle. That was not a smart thing to do to a uniformed cop and he was quickly arrested by Judy. The next day, his attorney Manny Moleinger talked Bogo into dropping the charges, although it was well known that the punch wasn't by a disoriented raccoon lashing out in defense. No, Jake punched Nick because years ago the fox had conned the coon out of some money.

But, Jake was also generous to a fault. Sometimes he would join the officers after hours at the Green Dragon Pub and would usually pick up the tab at the end of the night. "Runnel's paying!" was almost a call sign for off duty cops, but he would grin and protest if anyone offered to help pay. His relationship with Bogo was odd, for some reason the Chief always let the raccoon get away with things no other mammal could. It wasn't unusual to find the raccoon standing on the cape buffalo's desk as they yelled at each other when Jake's security team ended up interfering with an investigation, he was very protective of his employees.

Grinning the cat pulled up on his phone his favorite photo of the three friends, it was taken one evening at the pub and showed a rather inebriated fox's grinning muzzle rested on top of his wife's head, between the rabbit's ears, and his paw giving the ears sign behind the glazed eyed raccoon. Jake had fallen off the oversized chair right after the photo was snapped and wobbled back to his feet yelling, "I'm okay!" He then tried crawling back into his seat several times before McHorn scooped him up and plopped him down on the seat.

"Clawhauser!" Chief Bogo snapped. "Go find out what is taking Wilde so long down in Records." As the buffalo spoke, he handed the cheetah a file. "Now!" he commanded.

Ben hated the Records Archive, he had been banished there during the height of the Savage Times, before Judy and Nick solved the case and proved it was the Night Howlers making some predators savage. Since at the time, the ZPD wasn't sure why predators were going savage, they began moving officers out of field service. As he didn't reflect the image they wanted the public to see, the cheetah was banished to Records, next to the boiler room. With a sigh, he made his way down the stairs to the room and caught the fox…napping!

"Nick!" he yelled.

Almost comically, the fox jumped with a start and tumbled off the table where he was curled up. "I was working…I just shut my eyes for a moment," he said with a panic. Then realizing it was Ben, he relaxed and yawned.

"The Chief wants to know what is taking you so long?" the cheetah asked. "Here's another file."

"Yeah, sure tell old Buffalo Butt that…hey this file is empty?" Nick said as he sat it down on the table. It had a file number handwritten by Bogo on it. He went over to a box with the corresponding numbers and found a file with the same number, a large folder stuffed with notes. Setting the file on the desk, he leafed through the notes.

"What's wrong?" Clawhauser asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost!"

"Where's Judy?" the fox snapped, his voice was strained.

"In Interrogation Room A with Jake," the cheetah replied. "Fangmeyer, Wolford and Detective Oates are there too. Does this have anything to do with the dead raccoon they found?"

"She's dead?" Nick asked.

"Yeah, Oates just came from Little Amir where they found her body," the cheetah replied as he watched the fox sort through the notes and photos.

"Ben, this has been going on for over twenty years!" Nick almost yelped. "These notes are by Inspector Oakley, he writes about cases which have been unsolved and covered up, all raccoons!"

The fox grabbed the file and sprinted towards the stairs, leaving him to lock the room and then follow. He was huffing and wheezing when he caught up to the fox standing if front of the Interrogation room. The fox hesitated before he knocked.

As Nick opened the door, he saw Jake talking to Detective Oates and Judy. The horse looked amused, but both the rabbit and the raccoon looked embarrassed. "I reckon I've got the gist of what your saying," Oates chuckled before looking over at Nick and adding, "Well lookie who joined us, the proverbial fox and it looks like he's been in the hen house partners."

Nick scowled slightly, before this muzzle adopted his trademark smirk, "Where's Fang and Wolfie? Did you send them out for some more hayseed?"

Judy shot her husband an agitated look, but Oates began laughing and replied, "For a city boy, ya'll sure are witty. Now Mr. Runnel was telling me about his evening and his delightful alibi named Meredith."

"River Street!" Nick huffed and facepawed himself. "Of course you'd run to River Street. Why didn't you come to us?"

"I didn't want to get you in danger," the raccoon shrugged. "I wasn't sure what was going on, hell I still don't know!"

"Why are you still here?" Nick asked Oates. "Ben said you found the raccoon and Homicide should have the case now. You're with Missing Mammals right?"

"Yep, but the boss asked, no told me that he wants me running herd on this investigation," the horse replied. "Well partners, I reckon that we need to go over to the coroner's office. Sorry son, but ya'll need to confirm it's her."

The raccoon's ears went flat and he sighed as he hopped of the chair. The cheetah felt sorry for the guy, it seemed like he had all the weight of the world on his shoulders. "Anything I can do to help?" he offered to the raccoon.

"Yeah, see if Jasmine had any family," the raccoon asked. "I think I should break the news to them myself."

"Chief Bogo spoke with her islands embassy earlier," Ben replied. "They're flying a diplomat down to get her body."

"Still, I think I should call," Jake sighed. "I may have been her only friend in the city."

The cheetah watched as the horse led them down the hallway toward the morgue. Judy had the raccoon's paw and Nick had his arm around his friend.

"Clawhauser!" a voice boomed from behind him causing him to jump slightly before he turned to face the large Chief of Detectives. "Did Wilde get the file?"

"Yes sir!" the flabby cheetah answered.

"Then why are you not at your station?" the Chief Bogo asked.

Ben ran to the reception desk and climbed into his chair. After the cape buffalo left, he put his ear plugs in and turned on the latest Gazelle song.

* * *

 **For more about Jake's ability to pick locks and pawcuffs, read _Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption, Chapter 1: A Fall From Grace._**

 **His actions ultimately cause the ZPD to revise their outdated muzzling policy in** ** ** _Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption, Chapter 41: Ambush in Happy Town.  
_****


	7. The Tiger

**Chapter 7: The Tiger**

 **Fangmeyer and Wolford return to search Jasmine's hotel room for the evidence and are attacked. The team seeks outside assistance and we all learn what being a DOG really means.**

* * *

 _Who the hell does Oates think he is ordering me around like that!_ Fangmeyer thought as he adjusted his tie and slipped his suit jacket on. _He may be a Senior Detective, but he isn't part of the unit. Hell he isn't even with Homicide, but Missing Mammals._ Looking over at the lean timber wolf, he sighed because it was obvious that Alan Wolford smelled his agitation. There was little you could hide from a wolf's nose and Wolford had one of the best sniffers on the K9 Unit. "Yeah, I 'm pissed!" he growled. "I don't like being treated like a delivery boy and told to go fetch."

"I'll ignore the fetch quip since I happen to like playing fetch," the wolf snickered. "Look Oates is right that something is going on with these cases, you haven't seen the Pondstone file yet. Someone purposely screwed up that case or maybe somebodies, as in plural. "

"Still I don't feel…" the tiger started to say as he climbed into the unmarked police SUV, it was a large black vehicle designed for pursuit.

"Feel, Ha!" Wolford cut him off as the wolf adjusted his seat to fit his smaller frame. "Oates is one of the old guard, his track record is outstanding and he has been with the ZPD since I was a pup. Stop worrying about your damn feelings and start learning from him, I 've heard he's been talking about retiring soon anyways."

"So the old hayseed is going out to pasture," Fangmeyer laughed. "He's probably got white fences, blue grass, and mares in his future."

Wolford looked over at his former partner and even the tiger could smell the wolf's aggravated scent. "What?" the tiger asked.

"Did you know his wife died a few years ago of equestrian cancer?" the wolf replied with a sigh. "It's a slow and painful way to go. She was struggling with chemo when he and I worked briefly on the Pondstone investigation, he was a personal wreck. I think if he hadn't been so distracted, he would have called Codova on the carpet over the case."

"Sorry pal, I didn't know," Fangmeyer said. "You know how we male tigers are, we always want to be the Alpha."

"Hey, I'm used to not being the Alpha," Wolford chuckled. "Pack mentality, after all I live with almost thirty other wolves. Thirty tigers in the same room, you'd claw each other to pieces by the morning."

"Speaking of packs," the tiger said "I wonder why foxes don't have packs!"

"Why ask me?" the wolf chuckled. "Although Nick does a lot of cat like things sometimes, maybe you two are related after all!"

"What about coyotes?" Fangmeyer replied. "They always seem to take things to the extreme. I mean, pack and tribes, how do they keep up?"

"I don't know, but there are a lot of coywolves and coyfoxes around," Wolford answered. "It may be a cultural thing, my older sister once dated a coyote and he told her that the coyotes never were pure bloods. They have a legend that the First Coyote was the son of the son of the First Wolf and the daughter of the First Fox or something like that."

"I wonder way there aren't any coyote cops?" the tiger asked.

"Same reason the Wilde is still the only fox, who really trusts them?" the wolf replied. "Like foxes, coyotes are still looked down upon and despised by whole segments of the city's population. I've been with Nick when some businesses refused him service, even in uniform. Besides, our track record with the coyotes has never been that great, they don't trust cops."

"Spotted hyenas were the same way," Fangmeyer added as his paw gently and almost absently touched the black band on his badge as he drove. "But after what Phil Beltso did, we now we've got at least a dozen hyenas at the academy."

"Hyenas have a history of service in the Great Savannah nations," Wolford said. "They just have had a hard time integrating into this city's society. Phil only got in as a cop because of Lionheart's Mammal Inclusion Initiative, but I understand there were several hyenas turned down before he tried. I guess it's hard to understand how their society can be female led and that made the brass nervous. I'm sure you've noticed that none of the department's top officers are female?"

They pulled into the parking lot of the Radishton Inn, the hotel was near the heart of the downtown business district and wasn't that far from the more luxurious Regency Hotel were Jake lives. "You're the detective, so you get to tell the manager we're going to tear his room up again!" Wolford snickered.

The hotel's manager, a bristly little hedgehog, was not at all happy and let the much larger tiger know about it in no uncertain terms, but they were finally let into the room. The previous damage was very evident, the shredded bed had not been removed and broken furniture was piled in a corner. Workmammals had just began to patch the walls and watched with aggravation as the officers sat down their evidence satchel, pulled on plastic gloves and then using their knives, began removing the room's baseboards.

"Bingo!" Wolford proclaimed as he gently pulled out a small USB flash drive in a plastic bag and dropped it into a larger evidence bag, which he marked and sealed. Then he took out a camera and took a series of photos of where he found the drive.

Returning the camera and the evidence baggie into the satchel, he heard the tiger give a sad sigh and turned to see him looking down a frilly black negligee laying in the trash. "She came ready for Runnel," he observed. "Too bad he never got to see her in this."

Wolford gave a sad nod as they left the room and then after thanking the still angry manager, they left the hotel.

It is a well documented fact that wolves can smell things long before most mammals can see them and Alan Wolford caught the scent of the anxious rhino before they saw the thundering beast. "Look out!" he yelped as he jumped out of the way.

With cat born reflexes, Fangmeyer twisted clear of the oncoming charge, but not the swing of a beefy hoof that struck his shoulder and sent him sprawling. Picking up the evidence satchel, the rhino brushed Wolford aside.

There was the telltale crack of a police tranquilizer pistol, followed by the wolf's cussing, "He's got body armor under that jacket!"

The tiger pounced forward and onto the beast's back, raining blows about the rhino's head. The larger mammal momentary stumbled, but managed to grab the tiger's arm and throw him aside just as Wolford got off a few more rounds into the back of their assailant's exposed head. Staggering the rhino almost fell into the large black van which had arrived for him and once he had groggy crawled in, it squealed away.

"Come on!" Fangmeyer yelled as he sprinted towards their unmarked police vehicle.

The wolf sniffed and jumped to block the tiger from reaching the car. "Get down!" he yelled as the SUV was engulfed in flames.

"Shit!" the cat growled. "How the hell did you know?"

"Smelled the chemicals," Wolford answered as he tapped his nose. "Thermite has a unique scent." He momentarily watched the fire consume the vehicle as Fangmeyer frantically called the fire department and also for backup on his radio.

"We lost the evidence!" the tiger grumbled as he joined the wolf.

"Not necessarily," the wolf replied with a grin as he reached into his pocket and produced the USB drive in his paw. "I learned from Nick to always prepare for the unexpected. Who says this old dog cannot learn a new trick or two?"

"And here I thought dog was a cuss word to you chompers?" Fangmeyer laughed.

"Damn Old Growlers! A wolf can call another wolf a dog, but never a tiger." Wolford snickered.

"You're a speciesist!" the tiger chuckled. "Just for that, you get to do all the paperwork about the car."

The wolf gave a very canine whine and then laughed.

* * *

The paperwork for the burned up vehicle would wait, because first they had to log in the evidence and fill out a report on their assailant. After checking the USB Flash Drive back out, they met the remainder of the team in the tech lab, of course it was password protected.

"Jasmine," Fangmeyer suggested…nope.

"Raccoon"…nope.

Runnel spoke up, "Try Jake!" …nope.

"Someone is being self important today!" Nick chuckled as he affectionately ruffled the raccoon's fur between his ears. "If she meant you, she would try dunderhead, ring-tailed menace, or even bandit."

"And you're in gentlemammals!" the tech proclaimed. "I used bandit as the base word and then began adding numbers. I figured the way the raccoon was carrying on, that I would start with a number that would correspond with the average size on an erect male raccoon's penis and went up from there!" The ewe stood and after adjusting her glasses, made a fist pump and proclaimed, "Chalk up another one for the geeks in blue!"

Wolford looked at the number and snickered.

"Hey furball, I'm above average for a raccoon!" Jake snapped at the wolf.

"Sure you are Jake," the wolf chuckled.

"Focus guys!" Judy added. Then looking at the number, her ear's blushed.

"Focus carrots!" her husband laughed as he sat down at the computer and opened up a document, "Anyone know what language this is, it looks like a series of paw prints?"

"Hey Jake, that looks like the stains your paws leave when they are wet!" Judy replied.

"Could it be ancient raccoon?" Jake offered. "I heard there was once a written language."

"Can you read it?" Fangmeyer asked.

"They did not exactly teach that in school," Jake snorted. "Especially at good old Happy Town High, they barely even bothered to try teaching us Standard Common Language. I wonder if there is someone at the university who can read these markings?"

It took Fangmyer a few moments to do an online search to find a professor of Ancient Languages at the University of Zootopia. "Hey here's a lady at the university that specializes in ancient island cultures," he said.

Wolfard looked over the tiger's shoulder at the professor's photo. "Wow, she's good looking!" he remarked. "I have never seen an almost pure white jackal before and she isn't an albino either, look at those golden eyes. I wonder if she has any wolf blood in her?"

"Her bio says she's from the Sahara Region, so I doubt it," Nick replied. "So let's call her and see if she can help?"

Judy looked at her husband, Wolford, and Jake as they crowded around the screen. "I guess I should find my old can of fox repellent to keep her safe from you three!" she grumbled.

* * *

 **The officers are wearing the black mourning band on their shields to honor deceased police officer Phil Beltso, the force's only spotted hyena. Phil was a street cop, who was recruited as part of Fangmeyer's team as they hunted the war criminal, the** **enigmatic** **Birendra. He was later gunned down, a victim of the archaic practice of Honor Killing, for crimes his deceased father had committed as a mercenary in the Western Cape Republic. For more about Phil and the unique society he comes from, read** _ **Sins of Our Fathers.**_

 **Coyotes in this series are similar to the Native Americans or the indigenous peoples of North America, as they were despised and racially discriminated against because they were considered in the way of progress. Over two hundred years ago, the coyotes fought the expanding settlements into their territory and ultimately lost the war. Today, they are still held in suspicion by society because they are predators who still follow their old traditions and religion.**


	8. The Cape Buffalo

**Chapter 8: The Cape Buffalo**

 **The investigation continues and a specialist arrives from the university. Nick reveals what was it the mysterious file and his family's connection to past tragic events. Bogo is concerned with the investigation and is limiting who is involved.**

* * *

"This information stays here within these four walls," Chief Adrian Bogo told Detective Ronald Oates. "The less officers who know, the safer the case will be. Years ago I messed up on the Pondstone investigation and I'll be damned if this one gets screwed up."

The horse looked up at the large muscular cape buffalo who was wearing a regulation dark blue police uniform with four brass stars on each of his shirt's collars and wondered why he insisted on talking to him in one of the interrogation room's observation booths instead of his office. "So are you are saying that case was purposely blown?" Oates asked.

"Officially, I'm not sure," the buffalo sighed. "Unofficially, I'm sure."

Clawhauser called and informed them that Doctor Tafrara Amastan had arrived from the university in a squad car. Dressed in a light blue blouse and dark blue slacks, the almost white jackal was alluring, although somewhat muscular and didn't appear at all like an academic who spends her life studying old civilizations. Judy shot her husband an aggravated look, because the fox's muzzle was hanging open when he saw the jackal. Then, the rabbit rolled her eyes and sighed when she saw that both Wolford and Jake had similar looks. The jackal greeted the team with an accent which one would expect in the voice of a mammal who grew up in the Sahara and she gave the horse a dazzling smile as Detective Oates led her to the screen.

"I reckon you can read this scribble?" the horse drawled.

"Really detective," she chuckled. "Did you know that the ancient raccoon island society was once very advanced? They first built the water mill for grinding flour and constructed elaborate fish traps offshore. Unfortunately their civilization collapsed after a series of diseases, such as rabies and distemper.

"So my ancestors were not just thieves or trash collectors!" Jake proclaimed as he childishly stuck his tongue at Nick. "What did foxes ever do?"

"They learned to con raccoons out of their cash," the fox smugly replied.

"Guys, let the professor think!" Fangmeyer growled. "So can you read it?"

"Yes detective, but this may take some time," she said as she pulled out a notepad and sat at the desk. Then grinning, she added, "As for foxes, they invented the hot air balloon and after meeting Officer Wilde I know where they got all that hot air."

Everyone laughed, even Nick.

"As for raccoons," she continued. "I was talking about the island raccoons, not your ancestors Mr. Runnel. Your ancestors were still living in trees and fishing with their paws."

"What?" the raccoon replied, his pleased look was gone.

"Sorry!" she laughed, as did everyone else.

"See…" Nick began saying.

Bogo's huge body filled the doorway. "Wilde shut it!" he said before the fox could finish. "Did you finish with the filing?"

"Well, I did find something of interest to this case!" the fox proclaimed. "Opps, you just told me to shut it…"

Again before the fox could finish, the Chief cut him off, "Mr. Runnel under the circumstances, I am placing you under protective custody."

"What!" the raccoon growled. "Two friends dead along with another raccoon and you want to lock me up?"

"Wilde, take him to Interrogation Room A," the buffalo snapped. "Hopps, stay here with the professor and Oates go with Wilde. Fangmeyer and Wolford, get that damn Incident Report done for trashing the vehicle."

"We didn't trash the car!" the tiger objected, but the cape buffalo was gone.

"Shit!" Wolford grumbled.

"Hush and take you're whining elsewhere," the jackal piped in. "I need silence."

The wolf looked at her and then shrugged as he followed the tiger down the hallway, leaving the rabbit alone with the jackal.

* * *

Chief Bogo waited until Wilde, Runnel, and Oates were inside the Interrogation Room before he turned on the speakers inside the observation booth and listened.

"Ah reckon that you can up and tell me now what's in your paw?" Detective Ron Oates asked the fox. "It was obvious that the boss sent you to dig up something important."

"How about the possibility that we might have a serial killer or group of killers?" the fox replied as he opened the file. "Here are notes made by old crazy Oakley about raccoons being cut up for some time."

"Chief Inspector Robert Oakley was a brilliant detective," Oates said. "He was just too abrupt with his superiors and the ZPD brass, so they ran him out to pasture."

Nick began sorting through the random hodgepodge of notes and photos, laying them out in sequence. No official reports, just newspaper clipping, handwritten notes, and interviews.

"Hey the 1948 Union Riot in Happy Town!" Jake said as he picked up an old photo. "My pop said they killed almost thirty of us preds while putting down the riot."

Oates held up the photo, it showed a number of uniformed rams and other police offers standing next to the bodies of two dead red foxes and three possums. Handing the photo to Nick, he asked, "My eyes are getting a tad old, so what's that on the tree?"

"Shit!" Nick growled. "A naked raccoon crucified to the tree's trunk and he's been disemboweled. His ears drooped when he noticed the building to the far left, smoke was shown coming out of the broken window and hanging from the building's entry was a sign that read Wilde Times Billiards. "That was my grandfather's place."

Looking over his shoulder, Jake cringed as he saw that one of the badly beaten foxes bore a resemblance to his best friend. "But your grandfather lived?" he asked.

"Not on my father's side of the family," Nick grimly said. He was staring at the two way mirror and the look on the fox's face made Bogo frown. "My mother's father did, my father's father died that day in the fire. That fox is probably my great uncle, who staggered out of the smoke only to be accidentally killed. But everyone knows he was beaten to death by the cops."

"Not the ZPD," the horse said. "Happy Town had its own cops back then. Their actions led to the establishment of the first Civil Rights Commission being formed."

"Still only the union guys went to jail," Nick added. "Cops went free…mill owners went free…even the real rioters went free."

There was an awkward silence for a few minutes and then Jake asked, "If the others were beaten to death, why was the raccoon crucified?"

"Ninety nine is the next murder, that's over twenty years later!" Nick added as he shifted through the notes.

"Twenty one years," Jake replied. "Hey, here's another one twenty one years later in 2011."

"That should make the next murder in 2032, but Pondstone was murdered not that long ago?" Oates observed. "A change in pattern, why?"

"The stone!" Jake growled. "They killed to get that damn stone."

"They've killed three times already and attacked two cops," Nick added. "They are desperate!"

"So we need to find out more about this stone," the raccoon said.

"And we need to find it," the fox replied with a smirk. "If we have the stone, they will come to us!"

"I wish we knew where the inspector went when he left the force," the horse signed. "He was unorthodox but brilliant and this is the kind of case he'd have loved."

 _The Inspector was brilliant,_ Bogo agreed as he listened to the conversation. _He went into hiding after accusing the government of planning to use shock collars on the predators. I always wondered if he was right, was the whole thing covered up after Hopps and Wilde exposed the Night Howlers conspiracy?_

He pulled his pen and notebook out of his pocket and scribbled a note, then tearing the page out he folded it in half as he rose from his seat and opened the door into the interrogation room.

"Oates, let's find Fangmeyer," the cape buffalo said as he entered the room. "We've got a car to look at. Runnel you stay with Wilde, you're under protective custody. "

"Listen Bogo, you're crazy if you think you going to keep me here!" the raccoon snarled and then he opened the paper the Chief had handed him. "Alright I'll do that, but I'm also ordering lunch." He handed the note to Nick.

The fox looked up at his boss with wide eyes and then he smirked at the raccoon. "No worm burgers coon!" he said. "But ice coffee would be great about now. Oh and you're buying, I forgot my wallet."

"You did not bro, you're…" Bogo heard Jake fussing as he closed the door.

"Come on, we've got what's left of a car to look at in the motor pool shop," he said to the horse.

"After we're done, I want to revisit the last murder scene again," Oates replied. "By then maybe the professor will be finished."

There was a chubby pig in dark blue overalls staring up at what remained of a police SUV sitting on a lift, Fangmeyer and Wolford were already there. "Don't tell me the wolf was driving!" she grunted to the pair of cops. "He's as bad as the fox on my cars."

"That was one time! I hit ice on the road and skidded into that pond," the Wolford grumbled. "I did miss the truck full of frozen fish."

"It was Tundratown and you found the only heated ice free pond in the whole area!" the sow chuckled. "What about when you sideswiped the building?"

"That was Wilde!" the grey timber wolf objected.

"I get you two confused," the pig replied with a grin. "You two look alike."

"He's a FOX and red!" the wolf yelled. "I'm a wolf and grey!"

"Stow it you two!" Bogo interjected. "Priscilla, what happened to the car?"

"Wolford got it right, the fire came from underneath," the sow replied. "I'd say thermite based on the residue and the wolf's nose. The lab is running a test on that stuff as we speak."

"Are you definitely sure it was shoved under the vehicle and not attached beforehand?" the cape buffalo asked.

"Are you saying that someone in my department put a bomb in one of my cars!" the sow snapped back.

"I would have smelled it before we left," Wolford added. "Thermite has a unique scent, that's why I caught it at the hotel after the fight with the rhino."

"Good!" Bogo grunted. "Go to lunch and then Fangmeyer, I want you to meet me in my office. Oates you are free to get some food and check out the murder scene again."

Oates left them at the motor pool.

As they entered the main building, Clawhauser called out "Chief, Alderman Hoofster called and he's wants to know about the murder in Little Amir, the mayor called because it's now all over the press. Oh and Jake said he got you a couple of bulgur wheat burgers and fries, he also got fish sandwiches for you guys too!" The chubby cheetah returned to sipping on an iced coffee.

"The mayor can wait!" the buffalo grumbled. "I'm hungry, where did you get the iced coffee?"

"Jake got everyone coffee!" the cheetah replied.

"If the mayor calls, tell him I'm interviewing a suspect," Bogo said.

"OMG! Don't tell me Jake's a murder suspect?" Clawhauser asked.

"There are a lot of things I suspect that raccoon has done, but murder isn't one of those things," the buffalo called back as he walked down the hallway towards the break room.

* * *

 **Robert Oakley, also known as The Inspector, will show up later in the story _Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption_ as a friend of Jake's and a mentor of Judy and Nick when they take over the newly formed Cold Case Squad.  
**


	9. The Rat

**Chapter 9: The Rat**

 **Jake's partner gets a call and has to talk his tech guys into going to the police station, after they visit a strip club.**

* * *

For most of his teen and adult life, Jimmy Ratzolli had been in and out of jail for one thing or another, but never for a violent crime. Earlier in his life he committed many of the illegal activities himself but as he grew older, he soon established himself as a planner and leader of a successful gang of rats and mice. However like all criminals, his luck finally ran out and he ended up back in the penitentiary again. It was there that the forty two year old rat met Jake Runnel, a young small time burglar of brilliant but wasted talent. They were cell mates for ten of the eighteen months that the raccoon was in the prison and by the time that the Jake was released on parole, Jimmy had hoped that he had convinced the guy to turn over a new leaf and return to college.

Then came the news that the raccoon had actually knocked out Ronnie Charger, one of the city's meanest gang leaders and saved the life of the criminal kingpin, Mr. Big. Word also filtered in that Jake had begun a small security company which was instrumental in foiling some of the best burglars in the city, a move that did not sit well with many thieves. However, it was quickly clear that the raccoon was under the protection of the Northern Mob and so all thoughts of revenge were quickly set aside. It wasn't long before the rat heard that Jake was struggling with the success of his quickly expanding business and upon his release, Jimmy sought out his friend to offer his help.

"You told me that I didn't have it in me to keep doing what I was doing," Jake said. "You said go legit, get your degree and I'm trying. You're really not setting me up? I mean last time I trusted someone who was a burglar, he set me up."

"It's simple, my wife said she'd dump me if I go back to jail again," the rat answered. "I lost my first wife when I was in jail, she ran off with my ex-partner. I guess what I'm asking, is that you just give me a chance."

Within a few months, the rat found himself running most of the company's day to day business. Jake was a wizard with the technical end of the job and brilliant with the clients, but he just couldn't balance a checkbook. As they expanded their business, Jimmy began to bring in some of his more dependable former colleagues, at least those who were looking to leave their old lives behind.

Now he sat in his office, a real office with a desk and fancy tweed cloth chairs, as he stared at the text he just got from Jake. _Code 10 BAPO_ it read, a Code 10 was a debugging sweep and BAPO stood for Big Asshole Police Officer or the Chief of Detectives, Adrian Bogo. He looked at the door and sighed, he had spent most of the morning defusing their client's concerns that Jake was on the run from the police for a crime he committed. "That's just Jake!" the head of security for Lemming Brothers laughed. "Have him call me when Bogo get done with his scrawny ass!"

Jake's onetime flame, Melinda Velt had even come to the office to find out what the raccoon had done and was relieved when Jimmy told her that he was now at the police station. "As long as he's with Nick, he's safe" she proclaimed. It was apparent that she still had more feelings for Jake then being " _just friends"_ , as Jake had told him. He had hoped that the raccoon and cape jackal would become more than just lovers, she was perfect for him.

"Just water under the bridge," he muttered. "Although I wish that coon would quit running around and find himself a mate, my life would be so much easier if he would grow up." Picking up the phone, he called the tech department, "Jerry, we got an exterminating job to do, the boss called it in and needs it done now. Get Ben to load up the gear and met me out back." Hanging up the phone, he sighed again as he tightened his red and yellow striped tie before he rolled the sleeves of his light yellow dress shirt back down. Slipping his reading glasses into the pocket of this light grey suit jacket, the brown furred rat with the graying muzzle pulled it on as he left his office.

Once outside, Jerry gave the rat an aggravated look when the mouse found out it that their job was at the police station. "Come on!" he squeaked. "I've spent too much of my life trying to keep from going there and now that I've gone legit you want me to just waltz in the front door?"

"Yep!" Ratzolli laughed. "Now the head cop needs some old crooks to bail his damn horns out of a mess. Jake made the call, not me."

"Then what are we waiting for?" the bobcat said as he loaded the gear into the back of the truck. Ben was the quid essential young tech nerd, his ample belly covered by a faded comic book character t-shirt and a pair of worn jeans, he even had duct tape holding his glasses together. The bobcat was a genius on the computer and had hacked the company's website, but instead of pressing charges, Jake offered him a job. It turned out to be a great move for both the cat and the company.

"Ben it's the cops!" Jerry yelled. Compared to his partner, the small mouse wore a nice pair of khaki slacks and a white short sleeved dress shirt with a paisley silk tie. He was one of Jimmy's gang members from years ago and was renowned for his ability to get into just about anywhere. Unfortunately, the mouse had gotten into the wrong place, owned by the wrong mammals, at the wrong time and it cost him his right paw. Even after he started working for Jake, that mistake returned to briefly haunt him. Jimmy never knew what happened, but after the raccoon had a nocturnal visit with the mammal's in question, the problem went away. Rumor on the streets was whatever the Jake had said was clarified by a couple of much larger white furred visitors later that morning. Ironically, Jake never knew about the polar bears or ever spoke of his visit, but the leader of the mammals in question contacted the company about redoing his residence's security.

After the gear was loaded, Jimmy sighed yet again because he knew he should go with Jerry and Ben. It would give him a chance to check on Jake in person. He chuckled when another text came over his phone, then looking down at Jerry he grinned as he told him, "Jake's buying lunch today, so I guess you're going to have a meal with a bunch of cops!"

"The hell I'm going to!" Jerry grumbled.

"Yep, the hell you are!" Jimmy laughed. "You're now on this side of the law, so you're going to have to patch up your relationship with the cops. Besides, Bogo's really a nice guy once you know him."

"Really?" Ben asked as he pushed his glasses back onto his muzzle.

"Nope!" the rat laughed.

"I'm going to order the most expensive thing on the menu!" the mouse snapped as he climbed into the truck. "This might be my last meal."

"You know Jake won't let anything happen to you!" Jimmy chided the mouse. "Sooner or later you're going to have to interact with the cops, so today is a good start."

Ben pulled the van out onto the city's busy streets and Jimmy directed the bobcat to the business where Jake had ordered their lunch. "We're going to the Blue Parrot Lounge?" Jerry asked. "Isn't this a strip joint?"

"Jake and I know the chef, we spent time in the joint together," the rat answered with a chuckle. "He's a seal and makes the best fried fish sandwiches in the city."

When they arrived at the club, a very large one-eyed brown bear in a worn black tuxedo answered the backdoor. "Yo rat, aren't you dead yet?" he greeted Jimmy.

"I've gone straight, you know that Sammy!" the rat laughed as he hopped out of the truck. "I work for Jake now."

"Work for him!" the bear laughed. "Word is you run the place, but it's a good thing you guys make money faster than the coon can spend it."

"Chefs got an order for Jake," the rat told the bear. "I need to add another fish sandwich my size and one for the bobcat, plus fries and a drink. Hey Jerry, you want a cheese sandwich?"

"No asshat!" the mouse snapped back. "You know I hate cheese, so get me a fish sandwich too."

"Hey chef, run up a small and medium fish bomb to Jake's order," Sammy called down the hallway behind him. "And a minnow bomb too!"

A naked lynx peeked around the corner. "Is Jake here?" she asked and then giggled at the look the bobcat was giving her.

"No sweetheart, it's just his errand boys," the bear sarcastically replied as he swatted her in the tail. "Get out of the door, you're gonna give the kitten a heart attack."

She gave Ben a wink before she disappeared back into the building.

"Eh, too big for my taste," Jerry chuckled.

After loading the food and drinks in the truck, they finally arrived at the police station and were greeted by Nick and Jake, who had a large cart for the gear and food. Jake appeared rather ashamed as he looked down at the rat, his ears were flat and his tail dragged the ground. "We lose any clients?" he asked.

"Gee coon, the boss has an APB out on him and you didn't think our clients would find out?" the rat chided him.

"And?" the raccoon meekly asked.

"A couple of our client's want you to call, but most just told me of good places for you to hide," the rat laughed. "A quality group of mammals we do business with, they just wanted to know if you did it."

"It's a living," Jake sighed.

"Are you two just going to yap all day or help me unload?" Nick cut in as he smirked at the rat. "I see your still out of the joint Ratzolli."

"Stuff it Wilde!" the rat snapped back at the fox. "When you gonna let Jake free?"

"When we catch the bad guys," the fox sarcastically replied. "Which I hope is very soon, because if he spends too much time around here, he won't be able to afford to buy me lunch anymore."

"Free loading fox!" Jake chuckled as he gave his best friend a grin. "If I lose my job, I'll have to sleep on your couch."

The fox answered with an exaggerated groan.


	10. The Mouse

**Chapter 10: The Mouse**

 **One of Jake's smallest employees learns a thing or two about cops and himself. Nick and Jake realize they met when they were once much younger. Bogo has problems with bugs.**

* * *

The world is a dangerous place for any animal that stands only three inches tall, even in Zootopia and little Jerry Holeingsworth was reminded of that today as he stared up at the much, much, larger tiger in a blue suit. "Detective Fangmeyer, I can't say that it's good to see you again!" the mouse squeaked out.

The wolf standing next to the tiger sniffed and then sighed, "Come on Jerry, Fang didn't mean to almost step on you that night! You shouldn't have tried to hide."

"I would have escaped if it hadn't been for your damned nose!" the sullen looking rodent grumbled. "You sniffed me down and then stuck me in a paper sack."

"I didn't have any pawcuffs your size, so I had to do something," the wolf snickered.

"There was still grease from you cricket burger in the bag!" Jerry snapped. "I smelled like your fricking lunch until the hearing."

"You should have stuck to breaking the law in Little Rodentia," the tiger added. "The Rat Patrol has the tools for someone your size." Little Rodentia had its own private security force which is nicknamed by the locals as the Rat Patrol, because most of the guards were indeed rats. Most ZPD police officers are not allowed into the tiny village because of their size, only Judy and her partner Nick were small enough to regularly work with the locals.

"Ratzolli," a deep voice announced the arrival of the Chief of Detectives, Adrian Bogo. "It's good to see you again!"

"Ah Chief, I see you are doing well," the rat replied as he leapt onto a chair and offered his paw. Being just over a foot and a half, the brown rat was much smaller than the impressively tall, muscular cape buffalo who's hoof alone dwarfed the rat. "I've brought the team just as Jake asked."

"Lunch first, because I'm starved," the buffalo replied as he pulled up a chair next to the rat's and assisted the smaller mammal in adjusting his booster seat. "How much do I owe you Runnel?"

"My treat," the raccoon replied as he hopped into a booster chair. "Just catch the killer."

"We will!" the tiger snarled. "We are damn well going to catch them."

 _Them?_ the mouse thought. _What did the boss get himself into this time?_

Jerry watched as the buffalo picked up and took a bite from his bulgur wheat burger, which he realized was larger than the house the mouse grew up in. With a sigh, he took a bite of his tiny fish sandwich and was surprised that it was really good. The chef used cod and the mouse wondered, how _did that seal cut and fry such a relatively small piece of fish?_ There was general talking around the tale as everyone enjoyed their food. They had been joined by Judy and a strikingly beautiful almost white jackal with a pleasing accent.

So there the mouse sat, on a mat on top of the much larger table, surrounded by a wide array of mammals. To his left was a rat, a cape buffalo and a tiger and to his right a raccoon, a fox and a rabbit. In front of him sat a wolf and a Jackal next to a bobcat. _Maybe there's hope for this city after all?_ The mouse pondered as he sipped his tiny plastic cup of iced coffee.

"Hey Jerry!" Nick called out. "Didn't you set up the Petterson Bank's security system? Good job, those burglars didn't stand a chance."

The mouse smiled and replied, "I just improved Jake's original plan, but yeah it worked as promised."

"Like Wilde said, good job," Bogo added.

 _Maybe these guys are not so bad after all?_ The mouse thought to himself.

He listened as Wilde told the rather entertaining story of the unfortunate burglars who had attempted to break into the bank and his, along with Wolford's, role in tracking down the unlucky duo's attempted escape.

Jake groaned because the two perps were, of course, raccoons and had actually tried to hide in a nearby restaurant's dumpster.

"They smelled like rotten curry by the time we caught them," The wolf chuckled. "The motor pool supervisor was pissed the way the patrol cruiser stank by the time we got them back to the station."

"Priscilla is very protective of her vehicles," Judy added. "She has named each one and even yelled at me for Nick bringing the cruiser back smelling. I wasn't even working that night!"

"It's the Chief's fault!" the fox added with a smirk. "He assigned me to the K-9 Unit that night. He should wear his glasses more often because he always confuses me with the wolves. "

"No Wilde, there is no doubt that you're a fox!" Bogo answered with a small smile on his snout. "I just figured that if I put you with Wolford, he might break you of your vulpine ways."

"Lost cause Chief!" Jake laughed. "If anyone could break Nick of his bad habits it's Judy, but unfortunately his habits are rubbing off on her."

"Like I was saying, we found the raccoon's in a trash bin!" Nick said as he leaned over and gave the raccoon a grin. "Sound familiar?"

"That was just one time!" the raccoon snapped back. "I saw that neat looking blue bottle and…look I don't do dumpster diving! That was the first time I've been in a dumpster since I was an eight year old kit and got beat up by some bullies and they threw me in one!"

The fox's ears went flat and he asked, "Was it on a Halloween Night?"

"Yeah…wait?" the raccoon replied with a look of shock on his face. "That street fox, was it you?"

"Yep, little Mr. Astronaut," the fox laughed.

"You helped me out of the bin, cleaned me up, and watched over me while I finished trick-or-treating," the raccoon said with a smile. "That was really you?"

"A much more cynical teenage fox," Nick replied, then he slightly stiffened when it was apparent that the raccoon was about to hug him in front of all his co-workers.

At the last moment, Jake remembered the other officers in the room and instead, sat up and offered the fox a fist bump. "Thanks!" he replied. "I looked for you after that night, but you were gone."

"Yeah, Finn and I had moved on to a much more lucrative area of the town for a new type of con, I was growing out of the poor little lost pup gig by then," Nick added. He felt the rabbit's paw touch his arm and looked down at her. "Well that was a long time ago."

"Males!" Judy huffed. "You two are best friends, so hug!"

"But If you two kiss, I'm going to hurl!" the wolf snickered.

"Stuff it Chompers or I'll shave your tail!" Nick replied to the wolf. "Carrots is right, you are my best friend," he said to Jake. Then he reached over and drew him into a hug, everyone noticed that there was a tear in the raccoon's eye.

"Before they either start biting or licking each other, I think we've got some work to do," Ratzolli sarcastically chuckled. "Ben, let's get the gear and then you two can start to do a sweep of the big guy's office."

"I've still got work to do, because what I've interpreted so far isn't making any sense?" the jackal sighed. "Come on little Miss Shadow, its back to work."

Judy sighed as she hopped off her chair and followed the professor out of the room.

Ben offered a paw to Jerry and he climbed up on the bobcat's shoulder. _Ma would have had a fit if she had seen me riding on the shoulder of a cat._ The rat mused. _Hell three years ago, I wouldn't have trusted any cat to get this close._

He grabbed his partner's fur tighter as Ben leaned over and picked up the two cases of equipment. "Room first and then the phones, right partner?" he asked the mouse.

"You want us to zap anything we find?" Jerry called over to the buffalo.

"No just find and report for now," Bogo replied.

Bogo's office was relatively sparse when compared to most executive offices that the mouse had been to before. A large old oak desk with a worn office chair behind it, a couple of seats made for bigger mammals in front. To the right was two old grey metal filing cabinets, both had seen better days. The massive PC and keyboard was on a smaller desk to the left and it was quite evident that its owner did not regularly use it, since there were stacks of files lying on the desk. The only decorations on the institutional taupe painted walls were a few certificates and a photo of the Chief, Fangmeyer, and a rhino.

They set the gear up on the large desk and when Jerry started the scan, the machine lit up like a Winter Solstice tree. Ben's eyes grew wide as he saw the results, but Jerry held a digit to his muzzle and shook his head no. It took them a few more minutes to locate and study each listening device, along with a pinhole camera.

They left the room and after they scanned the Interrogation room where they were meeting Bogo, Jerry broke the bad news to the cape buffalo. "A couple ZIA type bugs, a mini cam, and two more standard issued ZPD devises," he reported. "You might as well conduct your business in the Old Watering Hole Park, everyone is listening."

"Can you trace back the ZPD gear?" Jake asked. "It would be nice to know who that spy is, but I'm not surprised about the ZIA stuff. They'll be impossible to track back, so you might want to kill those and give them a call to get their gear. They've bugged my apartment twice that I know of, I hope they didn't have any pinhole cameras in the bedroom last time Melinda came over."

"If they did, they'd have called by now and told you that you were doing it wrong," Nick chuckled.

"Har…har…not funny fox!" the raccoon snapped.

"Focus coon!" Ratzolli said. "So what's your call, Chief?"

"Kill the ZIA stuff and see what you can do about the others," Bogo sighed. "I really need to know who in the ZPD is bugging my office."

"We can track the signal from here," Jerry offered. "Chief, you and I can follow that signal. Ben can pull the ZIA bugs, he's been hoping to get his paws on some of their new tech and maybe he'll get a chance to give them a closer study before they come running. "

"Okay, Wilde and Wolford you go with Ben," Bogo replied as he nodded. "Fangmeyer come with me and Jerry. Runnel, stick with Wilde because I don't want you wandering off while you are still under protective custody."

The raccoon's ears went flat and he was about to object, but then he just sighed and nodded.

"Smart coon!" Ratzolli chuckled.

Jerry wanted to laugh at the face that his boss gave the rat, it was priceless.

* * *

 **For more about the night Nick & Jake first met, read _Zootopia: A Raccoon's Rescue._**


	11. The Bobcat

**Chapter 11: The Bobcat**

 **After the team is betrayed, can a nerdy bobcat save the day? A desktop's** **wallpaper on one of the company's computers embarrasses Jake.**

* * *

Ben was looking forward to getting his paws on the new ZIA listening devices, so he hurried down the hallway towards the lobby. His boss and the raccoon's best friend were right behind him, along with a timber wolf. Still in his early twenties, the nerdy looking bobcat was obsessed with electrical gadgets and programing. He loved his job and found it rather ironic that he only got it because he got caught breaking the law by hacking into the company's website. Somehow, the raccoon tracked him down to his dorm room and appeared one night at the doorway. At first, the bobcat had locked the door and was threatening to call the university's police, but Jake quickly picked the lock and after stepping into the room, reminded him that he was the one who committed the crime. Since the coon in the dark grey suit came bearing a six pack of beer and a pizza, Ben decided to listen to what he had to say. They spent hours discussing the various hardware systems that the bobcat had built and different online games, before Jake made him a job offer. The raccoon just had two rules, first that the cat would not hack into any other sites without his permission and the second was that he finished his degree. Jake always regretted he never finished his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering.

"Hey Nick!" the fat cheetah sitting behind the large reception desk called over to the fox. "I take it the professor is done, she just left out the front door without even saying goodbye."

A panicked look came over Nick's face and he grabbed his radio. "Officer Hopps respond…Judy respond…Carrots!" he yelled into the radio.

"Wolford see if you can catch the professor!" Jake snapped at the wolf. "Clawhauser call for backup." Then the raccoon turned and ran after the frantic fox.

The wolf didn't even hesitate as he bolted for the door. Ben looked up at the other cat behind the desk, who ironically was also named Ben, and shrugged before he ambled down the hallway after his boss.

By the time Ben arrive at the tech room, there was a crowd of officers huddled around the angry rabbit, who was being hugged by the fox. "She sucker punched me and tied me up with electrical cords!" Judy grumbled. "Let go of me Slick, I'm fine."

"Maybe we need to have the clinic check you out?" the concerned fox replied.

A frantic tiger entered the room and looked around. "Did she take everything?" Fangmeyer asked.

The fox nodded, but the rabbit smiled and answered, "Not everything, I printed the contents of the drive when she went to the bathroom. I didn't trust her!"

"It wouldn't have anything to do with the way Nick was drooling at her?" Wolford asked, he had returned empty pawed from the chase.

"Stuff it Chompers!" the fox growled before he turned his attention once again to his wife's eye.

A haggard looking cape buffalo entered the now crowded room, followed by a rat and a raccoon with a mouse on his shoulder. "Are you okay Hopps?" he asked. "Did she hurt you?"

"Just my pride," the rabbit replied as she finally extradited herself from her husband's overbearing care and stood. "Did you catch her?"

"Long gone as far as we could tell," the wolf replied.

"And the research?" Bogo asked.

"Carrots printed out the file," the fox proudly replied. "Leave it to my sly bunny!"

"Like I said, his habits are rubbing off on her," Jake said with a grin.

"Get to the clinic, you need ice on that eye before it gets too swollen," the buffalo ordered.

"I'd go quickly, before that eye blackens and you look like Runnel," the wolf snickered.

Ben picked up the printouts and to him it looked like some type of paw print language. One page had been partly translated into common language. "Hey guys?" he called out. "I wonder if my friend Max's encryption program can translate this? He wrote it to develop a written language for a sci-fi series that he's working on."

"You're kidding?" the tiger scoffed.

"Well he did use some old paw print language for his base program," the bobcat shrugged. "Maybe it'll work? I was going to Beta his program, so I've got it at the office."

"Wilde and Wolford, go get Hopps and follow Runnel's team. See what you can do to translate that stuff," Bogo commanded. "Fangmeyer, we've got some calls to make and a press conference to hold about the murder, you're with me."

"Everyone can thank me now!" Jake quipped.

"What did you do?" Ratzolli asked.

"I hired Ben!" the raccoon laughed.

* * *

As they loaded the gear back into the van, Ben asked Jerry, "Did you track down the ZPD bug user?"

"Yeah, right to Internal Affairs," the mouse replied. "Turns out that a detective in that department was doing an illegal surveillance right under everyone's nose, but the zebra disappeared about the time we did the search. Bogo was pissed and chewed out the IA boss good, I'm surprised you didn't hear him down the hall? Did you get the ZIA stuff?"

"Nope, Ratzolli made me leave it with the cops," the bobcat sighed. "He didn't want to mess with the feds again."

"What's the problem?" the mouse asked. "You look worried."

"Yeah, I just hope we get back before Jake does," Ben sighed. "I need to change my screen's wallpaper."

"Why?" Jerry began to ask. "Don't tell me you've got the photo you swiped off of Jake's phone?"

"That wildcat is cute," the bobcat sheepishly replied, his ears were flat upon his head.

"That wildcat is naked!" the mouse laughed. "Not to mention the boss ruts her!"

"Shhh! here comes Ratzolli," Ben whispered.

* * *

They arrived after the cops and Jake, and the now somewhat embarrassed raccoon was already in the workroom.

"Hey Jake, is that your hooker friend!" they heard Wolford ask.

"Sorry Judy, I had no idea that picture is being used as a wallpaper!" the raccoon was saying.

"Now I know why you're into cats!" Nick said. "Ow Carrots, what was that for?"

"Looking!" the rabbit chuckled.

"That is one of my favorite pictures," the raccoon observed.

"Jake!" the rabbit giggled. "You're a pervert."

The raccoon stepped back into the hallway and gave an amused look at the bobcat who was hurrying towards him. "Sorry!" Ben whimpered.

"Eth, she is a lady of the evening. A lot of mammals have seen her naked," Jake shrugged. "See what you can do with the program, I've got to call some clients."

As he entered the room, he was very conscious of the looks he was getting from the cops. Quickly walking over to the monitors, he killed the screensaver and pulled up the encryption program. "Let's scan these pages in and see what we get."

"Dude you left me in the van!" Jerry squeaked as he entered the room. Then looking at the cat's face, he asked, "They saw it didn't they?"

"You mean Jake's cat?" the wolf snickered. "Yeah we saw all of her!"

The mouse went over to a small lift he had made and rode the platform to the top of the table where he had a smaller desk and monitors. "Let me know when you finish scanning," he asked.

"We're up and running," the bobcat replied as he sat down at his desk. "And here we go!"

About an hour later, Jake returned to find everyone standing around the monitors looking dejected. "Did it work?" he asked.

"It tried, but the translations must be wrong," the bobcat sighed. "This doesn't make any sense."

Walking up to the screen, the raccoon glanced at the translations and smiled. "Are you seeing what I see Nick?" he asked.

"Yep," the fox replied. "But is that really what I think it is?"

"What? This is gibberish!" Judy sighed as her nose began twitching with frustration.

"It makes perfect sense to me!" the raccoon stated. "We just need to get it translated by someone else."

"That doesn't make sense and what do you mean translated?" Ben asked.

"Oh you naïve nerds," the raccoon now chuckled. "It's smuggler's code!"

"I guess we need to go visit Eddie "The Grey Ghost" Woods," Nick said. "He says he's retired, but he's still the best smuggler in town."

"You mean that old grey fox geezer with the snarky vixen who hates you, Nick?" Wolford said with a grin.

"What vixen hates you?" Judy asked.

"Woods has a secretary, at least says she is his secretary, but she does more than filing his mail," Wolford answered.

"I think she objects to our being married," Nick sighed. "She is a bit obnoxious."

"If I recall correctly, she said and I quote, you're also humping that cop rabbit too!" the wolf snickered.

"Oh I can't wait to meet her!" Judy snapped.

"You still have your old fox taser?" Nick laughed. "It might come in handy."

"This is promising to be a very interesting afternoon," Jake said to the bobcat. Then reaching into his pocket, he sat down two tiny listening devices. "Here, I swiped these on the way out, have fun."

"The ZIA bugs, but Ratzolli said…" Ben began to reply.

"The company's name is Runnel Security, so I still call some of the shots," the raccoon laughed.

Ben watched as the raccoon followed the officers out of the room.

"You did good kid," the mouse suddenly said.

"Thanks!" he replied as he sat down in his chair and then grinned as he began looking over the two little electronic devices in his paw.


	12. The Grey Fox

**Chapter 12: The Grey Fox**

 **Jake makes a promise to the legendary smuggler The Grey Ghost.**

* * *

Eddie "The Grey Ghost" Woods is a legend in the smuggler's world and despite the ZPD's best efforts, along with those of several international police forces, the fox always got away. But time was one enemy he could not avoid and the fast pace of technology made it harder to stay ahead of the law, so finally he threw in the towel and decided to retire. He chose one of Zootopia's best retirement homes that catered to the rich and settled down with his memories and his fortune, but that was about all he had. There was a lot of white in the wheelchair bound fox's grey fur and he was still in his blue silk bathrobe and white and blue stripped pajamas despite it being late afternoon. With a heavy sigh, he reached with a shaking paw into the desk and pulled out a delicately carved richly brown colored mahogany wood box. His paw traced the carving of two cranes in flight and then he gently opened the lid and removed a photo that was over forty years old taken of him in his prime, along with the true love of his life, a grey and and black jackal.

"Shera, we had a grand time back then, why did you have to leave me?" the old fox asked as he wiped a tear from his eyes with his paw and sat the photo down of the cherry wood desk. They were the grand couple of the coast, raking in the money and living large. But what the law couldn't do to end their smuggling reign, nature could and their partnership ended up in tragedy. He told her not to take the job that night and to wait out the storm, but she laughed and told him the deadly weather was providing the perfect cover for her run. Leaning over she passionately kissed him, before she walked out into the pouring rain and he never saw her again. The next morning, her ship was found smashed against the rocks along the barren coast and her body was never found. A large part of his soul went into the watery grave that day and he never truly loved again.

After her death, he became reckless making the notorious smuggler's run along the Great Sahara Coast time and time again. The odds of his being caught were great, but the chances of his meeting pirates were even greater. It was on his third run out of Marekia that he was boarded, but his crew defeated the attackers and with his whirling blade, he slew their captain the notorious goat named Captain Kidd. He then successfully made the run into Edum with a boatload of medical supplies and food for the besieged villagers, only to have his boat blown up by the very rebels who hired him. He escaped by foot into the mountains and hid from both sides of the rebellion, before returning to extract his revenge on the rebel leaders by stealing their last boat and leaving them to be captured by the victorious government troops. But his most legendary feat wasn't for smuggling; it was his long running feud with the band of child slavers in the Western Cape. He finally put an end to their evil operation and then like a modern day Moses, he led the children home to their village.

Ironically Eddie made his most money by smuggling in fresh lobster and crabs during the blockade which happened after negotiations between the City of Zootopia and the offshore coastal aquatic mammal population failed following the Astra Fair Fishing Incident. The aquatic residents demanded equal citizenship and forced the ports to close, cutting off maritime trade and all seafood to the city. After a settlement was brokered by the then Aldermammal Leo Lionheart, the blockade was lifted and trade resumed. The establishment of a harbor patrol and an offshore Zootopia Police Precinct made it almost impossible to make seaborne smuggling by boat. But seeing the prospect of earning a legitimate profit, he bought stock in a fleet of massive barges to be towed by whales across the sea-lanes. He also invested in aquatic fisheries and kelp farms along the coast, making a pretty sum of money in meeting the growing demand for affordable seafood by both aquatic and terrestrial mammals.

The fox was now a wealthy and debonair member of the city's society, although he still kept his paw in some of the local smuggling in an advisory role. His life became a whirl of social events, females, and parties. Then one evening, he had his first stroke and had to face the fact that his body was declining in health. Now he found himself wheelchair bound and on oxygen after his recent stroke.

He smiled as his secretary entered the room and with a sigh, she leaned over to pick up the pen he had tossed onto the floor. The red fox vixen knew exactly what he wanted her to do and even swished her tail a little as he admired her body. Her name was Samantha, a name that did not fit her personality at all, so he called her Sam. His days of bedding her, as they both often enjoyed, were over. _No more little blue love pill for me,_ he realized. _My heart wouldn't take another romp, but that might not be a bad way to go?_

The fox had expected that she would have left him by now for greener pastures, but she didn't. _Perhaps her sense of loyalty was greater than her instincts for self-preservation?_ He mused. _Maybe she just really cares about me after all?_ Either way, she was going to be a very wealthy vixen when he died because he was leaving her to inherent half of his fortune. He had always told her that he was going to give it all to charity, so he was sure she had no idea of his intentions. His musings were interrupted when she came over and adjusted the blanket on his lap.

"Don't want your meal ticket to catch pneumonia?" he chuckled.

He was expecting a snarky reply and last week would have gotten one, but that was before his latest stroke. "Something like that," she replied and gave him a sad smile and not the usual smirk. "You have visitors. It's the fox and the wolf again, you know the cops. Are you up to talking with them or should I send them away?"

He coughed and she looked at him with concern, before he shooed her away with his paw. "I'm fine, send them into the office."

"There is also a rabbit cop and a raccoon with them," she added.

"I get the full Wildehopps experience, I should be honored!" he chuckled. "I wonder if the raccoon is Runnel, I always wanted to meet him?" He coughed again and wheezed a little before he adjusted the nose piece to his oxygen.

"Are you sure?" she asked with a concerned voice.

"Why not?" Eddie replied. "It beats afternoon television."

He watched as she walked out the room, her tail wasn't swishing as much as it used to do. _I hope you find yourself a better lover,_ he thought to himself. _At least she's a smart cookie and won't blow her money on wild living."_

He quickly scooped up the photo and returned it carefully into the ornate box and prepared himself for his visitors. A small stabbing pain was in his chest again and he reached for the pills, but hesitated because they would give him a bad headache and dull his mind. He needed to be sharp and alert with Wilde coming. No, he would wait until they left before he took the medication.

As they entered the room, it was quite evident that the canids had smelled his illness before they saw him. _You can't hide scents from wolves and even my kind,_ he mused. He looked the two officers in their blue uniforms over and then the rabbit, who smelled agitated. _Wilde must have told her about his last visit. Good old Sam really gave him hell about their relationship._ Then there was the raccoon, who looked at him surprisingly somewhat in awe. "I'm real, Mr. Runnel and not the stories you have heard from your pals," he said with a chuckle. "But you already know that because you broke into my apartment years ago and took some of my petty cash. I always wanted to know why you didn't take everything?"

"It wasn't my way, I guess I just thrived more on knowing I could beat your security," the raccoon answered with a grin and then looking at the box on the desk, he added. "I saw what was in your box and knew you were more than the legendary Grey Ghost. I saw that you are like the rest of us."

"And how is that?" the Eddie asked before he coughed.

"You're just a mortal with hopes and regrets," Jake answered. "Why didn't you come after me, since you knew who I was?"

"Professional admiration," the retired smuggler answered. "Very few thieves could have done what you did that night. You also did not take anything that I really cared about."

Turning to the rabbit, the grey fox smiled and added, "This all allegedly happened, Officer Hopps. If a crime had been committed, I would have called the police."

She gave him a look of disbelief, before replying, "I'm sure you would have sir."

"By the way, I always wanted to thank you and Wilde for stopping Bellwether before she got out of control," he said. "Things were getting ugly and I really like living in this city, so you saved me the expense of having to move to a more predator friendly location. But, that is not why you came to see me today, is it?"

"We need your help reading some documents," Nick spoke up. "It's in Smuggler's Code."

"And why would it be something I would want to help you with?" the grey fox asked. "I am not in the habit of helping the police. Not that I am not a law abiding citizen, of course."

"It was written to Jasmine," Jake answered in an angry voice. "She was brutally murdered because of what it contains."

"I heard about her death, she was a talented smuggler and what a horrible way to die," Eddie said as he tried to adjust himself in his seat, the pain radiated from his chest to his shoulder and was increasing. "Let me see these letters quick!"

Sam looked up at him with concern, but did not move. _She knows what's happening, but is respecting my choice,_ he realized. _She's going to be pissed when this is over._

Nick handed him the documents and he rifled through them quickly. "There mostly just correspondence about how the writer is doing and that she will send more letters when she can," he said. Then he picked up the last sheet. "Dear gods, she hid that stone here in the city! You must find it before the Others do, they have been after it for centuries."

"What's so special about this stone and who are these Others?" Wolford asked, but the fox wheezed and just shooed him with his paw.

"She hid it in the cavern in the side of Rocky Point, under the old Customs Fortress, "Eddie said. "Jake, you must get it before they do. It must not be reclaimed by the others, not if it has the powers the legends say it has. Do you understand me?"

Jake looked the fox in the eyes. "I don't …" he began to say.

"PROMISE!" the fox growled.

"I will do what I can," the raccoon replied.

The fox nodded and slumped in this chair. "That's all I can ask of you," he sighed. It was obvious to everyone he was in great pain.

Sam came forward and opened his pills, taking out two, and pouring him a cup of water. "It's time for everyone to leave," she snarled.

"But we're not finished," Judy objected.

"We're done," Nick interjected. "Thank you for your time, sir." He reached over and grabbed his wife's paw and pulled her towards the door.

"Thank you," the raccoon said as he walked over and picked up the papers from his desk. "It was an honor meeting you." Then as they were walking out, he handed the papers to Wolford.

The grey fox was now exhausted and in terrible pain as he watched his visitors leave. Reaching over, he took the pills and drank his water.

"I'll be right back," Sam told him. "Then we can sit on the couch while I read you today's paper."

He smiled at her, "Sure but just not the obituaries, I'd hate to find my name listed."

When she left, he straightened himself in the chair and awaited his next visitor, this one the infamous Gray Ghost knew he couldn't out fox. Reaching over he pulled out the old photo again and looked at his true love.

Death didn't come for Eddie "The Grey Ghost" Woods as a dark robed figure with a scythe, but as a memory and she was as beautiful as the day they first met. She held her paws out for him with a smile and he rose for her embrace. "Come on Eddie, the ship awaits us," the jackal laughed. "It's time to make that last run together."

Samantha found him slumped on his desk and her mournful yowl announced to the world that a legend had passed into history.

* * *

 **Nick introduces Wolford to the legendary Grey Ghost in the story** _ **Sins of Our Fathers**_ **,** ** _Chapter 15: Bad News for a Fox._**


	13. The Timber Wolf

**Chapter 13: The Timber Wolf**

 **Our heroes are attacked and the assailants take something that the team wasn't expecting. Nick makes a phone call which upsets Fangmeyer. Fangmeyer and Oates get into an argument, as Chief Bogo finds out about one of Jake's little jokes.**

* * *

As they stepped out onto the street, Nick reached into his pocket and snapped open a pair of mirrored sunglasses before he set them on his muzzle. Alan Wolford wanted to laugh because Jake did the same thing with a much more expensive pair of sunglasses. _If those two weren't different species, I'd swear they were brothers,_ he thought.

Judy was the first to hear the squealing tires as two black vans slammed their brakes, jarring the vehicles to a stop besides them. "We've got company!" she yelled as she turned towards the dozen armed grey jackals in black uniforms that were spilling out of the vehicles.

Drawing his tranquilizer pistol he snapped off a round two rounds into the first jackal, to his left he heard Judy's dart gun fire. It was then that they were hit from behind by another group of jackals, a blow made him stagger and drop his pistol. Turning towards his attacker, he saw the jackal fall after a series of powerful kicks from the rabbit. To his left, Nick was struggling with another assailant.

The wolf drew his baton just in time to block a knife. "Judy!" he yelled as he blocked a series of blows, which drove him back. She bounced off the wall and into the knife welding jackal's back, sending it sprawling into a parked car. As she stood, he shoved the file into the rabbit's paws. "They want the notes," he growled. "You're the fastest of us, take them and run!"

"No!" she protested.

"Do it Judy!" Jake yelled as the raccoon flipped a jackal over this shoulder and slammed her into the pavement. "Run!"

She looked wide eyed at her husband who now was fighting for his life. "Carrots run!" the fox yelled. Her ears drooped and then with a determined look, she sprinted down the street weaving between traffic.

"No!" a female jackal commanded as several of the assailants ran to follow the rabbit. "Not the rabbit, get our target!"

Wolford drove another knife welding jackal back with a series of punches. Hearing a yip, he glanced over and saw that Nick was sprawled out on the sidewalk, obviously hurt and a jackal stood over him preparing to stab a wicked looking curved blade into the fox. There was the snap of a tranquilizer gun and two rounds slammed into the attacker and a third into the face of another, as Jake stepped over his friend's fallen body. The raccoon had picked up the fox's fallen gun and now that it was empty, threw it at another jackal.

"Get him!" the female jackal yelled. "Get the raccoon!"

Wolford had sent his assailant sprawling with a series of blows and turned toward the raccoon, just in time to see Jake chattering with anger as he went down under a pile of the jackals. With a snarl, the wolf began to lunge forward to rescue the raccoon, but was blocked by a large rhino. "Remember me?" the rhino bellowed.

"I always remember ugly," the timber wolf growled. He could hear the sound of sirens in the distance as he looked the larger mammal in the eyes. "Ready to dance?"

He landed a blow with his baton across the rhino's face, which actually caused the beast to stagger, but then he was hit in the chest by several sharp pains and looked down to see the stains the tranquilizer rounds left on his uniform. Staggering, he looked up to see the female jackal aiming his own gun at him. He growled at her, but then the rhino's hoof hit him and there was darkness.

* * *

"Partner…" a voice spoke to him from the out of the darkness. "Wolford, wake up!"

Groaning, he blinked at the bright hospital lights only to see the face of his friend and former partner Richard Fangmeyer looking down at him with concern. "If I'm dead, they screwed up and sent me to cat hell," he tried to chuckle, but it came out more as a slurred groan.

"Bad jokes, that's a good sign," Nick said from across the room. The fox stood with his left arm in a sling and standing next to him was an agitated rabbit.

"They weren't after the file," she snapped. "They were after Jake."

"Why did they take Runnel?" he slurred out the question.

"He's a raccoon!" Nick yelled and began pacing around almost in a panic. "We have to find him before they kill him!"

"We have an APB out for him again, every officer is searching the city for him," Fangmeyer sighed. "It's all we can do!"

"Where's my phone!" the fox snapped. "I need to make some calls."

"Here's your phone pard," Detective Oates said as he entered the room. "I reckon you wanted this phone, so ya'll can call someone I don't want to know in private." The tiger gave the horse a look of agitation. "We're above our manes in the one detective and need all the help we can get, no matter from which stable."

Wolford watched as the fox tore the phone out of the horse's hoof and ran out of the room. "If anything happens to that raccoon, this city might just burn," he muttered.

"If this stone does what I was told it can do by the mythologist I just interviewed, this here town is gonna burn," Oates muttered.

"Stories? Legends? Tales? Is that all you're going to bring to this investigation!" the tiger roared as he turned to face the horse. "We need more than that kind of shit. What's next Oates, a physic?"

"Runnel was kitnapped by grey furred jackals from the Sarah region," Oates answered, he didn't look offended, but the wolf could smell the horse's agitation. "They are from the Bweha Pack and they are here for the stone. Jasmine wasn't murdered in Little Amir, but in a desert area and so was the nun. If they are going to kill Jake, it will be somewhere around Sahara Square. If you're gonna understand who is who, you need to up and find out why they're trotting the way they're going."

"But magic!" the angry cat snapped. "You're wasting your time with tales of magic!"

"Just because ya'll don't believe in magic, don't mean others do," the horse sighed. "It's motive, detective! They up and believe that the stone is magic and that is their motive to kill! Do you know why they're killing coons?"

The tiger stopped and looked at him with curiosity.

"Ah reckon you don't," the horse sighed. "That stone is called the Serpent's Stone and the tale goes that during the age of the great king Mufasa _,_ its magic was used against his army by invaders called the Others and they almost destroyed his kingdom. The night before the final battle, a thieving raccoon crept into camp and stole it from the wizard, the next day the king's army defeated the invaders. The stone was sent across the sea to be guarded by the island raccoons, who refused to give it to the king because they feared that it would corrupt him too."

"So they kill raccoon's as a sacrifice?" Wolford asked. He winced because his muzzle was sore and swollen. "But why do they kill one every twenty-one years?"

"They up and believe that their evil serpent god sheds his skin every twenty one years," the weary horse said as he sat down in a chair. "This city ain't the only place they've been killing coons either."

"When was the last time you've slept?" Judy asked as she came back into the room, she gave the horse a concerned look. "You look exhausted."

"Ah reckon, I haven't slept much since my filly passed away," the horse chuckled. "Did you're fox make his calls to your friend?"

Judy looked over at Fangmeyer and Wolford and then she sighed, "Mr. Big is a friend of Jake's and one of his customers, he needed to know."

"Big is a gangster!" Fangmeyer growled. "Now we are working with the mob!"

"No one has pinned a crime on Big," the horse muttered. "I'd dance with the devil herself to put this crime six feet under and save that coon. As I said, we need all the help we can get."

"He's right Fang," Wolford added. "We were attacked just after we left interviewing Eddie Woods, Wilde thought he could read the Smuggler's Code and he was right. You know that there are rumors that he was the infamous smuggler The Grey Ghost."

"Woods is dead, he died of a heart attack just after the interview," Bogo said as he entered the room. "The doctor says you're lucky and didn't break your jaw Wolford, why didn't you use your taser projectile launcher on the rhino? We issued those, along with the new Mk.3 pistols to the team weeks ago."

"They don't work," the tiger sighed. "I've reported that to the armory."

"Damn, next time we have an equipment malfunction let me know!" the cape buffalo cursed. "I don't care what protocol is when it comes to the lives of my team."

Judy's ears drooped as the Chief saw Nick's gun belt sitting on the counter and picked it up, he pulled out the taser launcher tube. Then noticing the spray canister of mace, he frowned as he read the professionally printed label that had been affixed. "Cape Buffalo Repellent and it even has my frowning face on it, cleaver. I take it your husband got this from Runnel?" he asked.

"It was a gag gift," the rabbit replied. "A joke, but it is the best mace on the market and better than the standard issued mace sprayers."

"I wonder if Runnel has any more of these laying around?" Bogo mused. Wolford noticed there was a small smile on his snout. "A triple dial top which regulates the amount of spray per shot, a great way to control the dosage based on the mammal's size. This might not have brought down the rhino, but it would have made his eyes hurt."

"Jake had to order a full case," Judy replied. "Sorry, about the joke, I told him it wasn't funny."

"Call Ratzolli and see if there are any more canisters still around and if so, see if we can get some for the remainder of the team."

"But what about the label?" the rabbit asked.

"Burying an officer would hurt my feelings more than a gag gift Hopps," Bogo replied. "Officers always make fun of and gripe about the guy in charge, I it did when I was in the field. Just tell them I don't know, you know a good humorous group gag kept secret about the boss never hurts moral. Besides it would be coming from a guy who already calls me buffalo-butt."

Judy was about to respond when a snort was heard from the chair and everyone quickly looked over at the sleeping horse.

* * *

 **The team receives their new Mark 3 tranquilizer guns in Chapter 2 of _Sins of Our Fathers._ Because of his size Nick's gun only has three rounds, whereas Fangmeyer's larger gun has a dozen. Due to her much small size, Judy still uses the old standard issue patrol officer's dart gun. Nick also discusses Jake's gag gift with the police quartermaster.  
**


	14. The Rhino

**Chapter 15: The Rhino**

 **Jake is kitnapped by the rhino and the jackals, before he meets the leader of the Others. He is then given a poison that makes him tell them everything, just not what they want to hear. Finally, the raccoon gets his butt shaved in preparation for his sacrifice to an evil god.**

* * *

The rhino smiled as he heard the wolf give an involuntary yip as his hoof caught the already staggering canine's muzzle. "Shoot me with that damn gun in the back of my head!" Peter Von Horn bellowed at the fallen police officer before looking around. The rabbit was long gone, the fox was on the ground and so was the wolf, behind him he heard the raccoon chattering in anger as he was bodily hauled by the jackals into the back of the van. He looked down at the wolf and grinned, the rhino enjoyed bring pain to others. Over eight feet in height and muscular, he was a veteran of the many small bush wars that plagued the Great Savannah nations. But, his sadistic ways were too much for his unit commander and he was fired after he crushed a prisoner to death just for fun. The hyena was a member of the CAR Constabulary who was already wounded and he grinned as he felt the hyena's bones snapping and saw the blood running out of her muzzle. Then he unzipped his pants and pleasured himself, ejaculating onto her broken body. This was too much for the other mercenaries and he was run off under pain of death if they ever saw him again.

After floating from one job after another along the jungle coast, he booked passage to Zootopia. At first he found employment as a low-level street enforcer for the mob leader Salazar in the Sahara Square District. That job came to an end abruptly when he cut the ears off of a hare during a routine shake down for a protection racket that the mob was running. He took this gig because he knew another enforcer, a grizzly bear by the name of Bruno, who recommended him. Not long after they started working together, they got into an argument and he broke the bear's neck.

His earlier mission for the boss almost ended up a disaster, thanks to the wolf. All he had to do is grab a satchel from the two cops in front of the Radishton Inn, which he accomplished. The problem was that the tiger was too fast and fought back, slowing him down. Then he was shot in the back of the head by the wolf and barely made it inside the van before the tranquilizers made him pass out. On top of that, the satchel did not have what they were looking for and must have still been with the cops.

"Come one!" a female jackal snapped at him. "Let's go now!"

"You shot that damn wolf before I could get him back," he bellowed at her.

"We got what we want," she snarled back. "You're not paid to kill cops, but to do as I say!"

Grudgingly he climbed into the van before it sped off. "At least I got a good punch in before he went down," he laughed. "Maybe I broke his muzzle?" Then looking at the raccoon bundled up on the van's floor, he asked, "All that for this SOB?"

"That is our mission, to bring him in alive," the jackal responded.

The raccoon struggled and somehow got his paw free of the pawcuffs that he was wearing, he desperately grabbed for a nearby jackal's knife.

"Hold him down!" the commanding jackal yelled.

Peter put his hug hoof on top of the struggling raccoon and began pushing down hard, grinding the mammal into the floorboard. The coon began to yell in pain and then started gasping. "Hurts asshole," he laughed. "You haven't even felt pain yet."

"Don't crush him!" the jackal angrily yelled, her knife was on the rhino's throat. "Let up on him!"

Another jackal drove a hypodermic needle into the raccoon's arm and the mammal went limp.

"I said let up!" the jackal snarled, as she pushed the knife harder into his throat.

"Okay…okay…shit I was only playing," the rhino said as he lifted his hoof.

The jackal relaxed and withdrew her blade. "The Master wants to question him about the stone before he is sacrificed like the others."

"You mean he's going to let those fools rape him on the stone and then strangle him?" the rhino asked with a big grin. "I wonder if he'd let me pull the rope this time?"

The jackal looked at him with wide eyes and then sighed.

* * *

Ahead of them was an old warehouse, rotting from disuse on the edge of the Meadowlands. The imposing structure was all that remained of an old woolen mill that once drove the area's economy, but now its brick walls were crumbling as it sat forlorn and isolated in a tangle of woodland. Armed jackals patrolled the fields around the building.

Slinging the raccoon over his arm, he carried him into the building and threw him into a chair. Then stepping back, he watched as a jackal quickly bound their victim with rope. "Well tails, you're going to have fun now!" he chuckled.

Peter didn't like the boss because the rhino thought he was bat shit crazy and unpredictable. Too many times he had to listen to the guy's preaching about some snake that was coming to rule the world, religious nonsense. But he paid cash and to the rhino that was more important than his soul.

"Hey Pete," one of the jackal guards called over to him. "You know who this is?"

"Don't care!" the rhino yawned.

"He's the coon who brought down that rhino, you know the gang leader," the jackal laughed. "Too bad you two can't fight, because I'd love to see him whip your ass!"

"Charger was a street punk, a shitty embarrassment to us rhinos!" Peter huffed. "I'd snap that coon in half and then as he laid paralyzed, crap on him before I slowly crushed him with my hoof."

"He's not yours, but an offering to Ouroboros," a voice said from the doorway.

The rhino looked over at the mammal who was speaking, it was the boss. The tall red deer had a full rack of antlers and was dressed in a black priest robe, including the traditional white collar around this throat. However hanging around his neck wasn't the images of the Lamb and Lion, but an emerald green medallion of a snake eating its own tail.

"He will be a sacrifice to our god!" he reverently intoned as the jackals knelt in his presence. "A guide to our finding the Sacred Stone, which will bring down the false gods and bring a new era to the world! It is not too late to save your soul Peter!"

"The five thousand you owe me will save what little soul I have," the rhino replied.

Aggravated the deer snapped his hoof and a weasel joined him carrying an envelope. "Your money, infidel," the priest sighed. "Riches will parish with the new order, so beware."

"Blood money!" the raccoon spat, he had just awakened and was struggling against his bindings. "Watch it rhino, you're expendable to this guy. He'll have the jackals cut your throat when you're no longer of any use to him. He paid you only five for your services, I'll pay you half a million if you break his fucking neck!"

The rhino considered the offer, but the sounds of knives being drawn convinced him that he would never collect. "No, it isn't worth the effort," he laughed. "You're already dead coon, just like that smuggler you were going to rut last night before we grabbed her off the street. They say she moaned when they gang raped her on the stone before they strangled her. I'll bet you'll moan when they drive their pricks into your furry ass!"

"You bastard!" the raccoon yelled as he struggled to get free.

"Enough!" the priest commanded. "Give him the Holy Venom!"

A jackal brought a dark stone box over to the chair and pulled out an odd shaped item that looked like the jaws of a poisonous snake. The raccoon struggled to get free, but the jaws snapped down onto his shoulder. He yelled from the pain and then began to cease his struggling. "I won't talk," he mumbled.

"You'll tell us everything," the priest replied. "The venom will make you."

Telling them everything is exactly what the drugged raccoon did…for hours. The rhino rolled his eyes as the raccoon mumbled about having sex with a wildcat, being jealous of a fox for having a rabbit as a mate, and even all about how you can open something called a Haymaker safe. But, when it came to where the stone was hidden, he just spoke gibberish.

Finally the priest sighed in agitation, "He's useless! He has no idea where the stone is located! We should have captured the files. Have our scouts keep watch on the police, they will lead us to where the stone is hidden. As for this piece of filth, prepare him for tonight's ceremony!"

The jackals untied the drugged raccoon from the chair and dragged him towards a tub of water that they had prepared as a ritual bath.

"I want to kill him, let me strangle him with the rope," Peter said. "Let me do it!"

The priest turned and glared at him. "You are an unbeliever, so you will stay here tonight. I will call you when I need you," he said before he turned and angrily stormed out of the room yelling "infidels!"

The rhino watched as the jackals stripped, washed and dried the raccoon. Then laying him out on the table, they brushed his fur and trimmed the fur under his tail before they gave him an enema to purge his bowls in preparation for the unholy act that would be performed later that night.

"Will he feel it when they rape him?" the rhino asked as he curiously watched the activity. "He looks like a virgin, at least back there."

"He's so drugged up that I doubt it," a jackal replied. "Even if we didn't sacrifice him, he wouldn't survive the Serpent's Venom. They say it eats away at your soul, so no he's as good as dead now."

They shackled the naked raccoon and wrapped him in a white cloth before they carried him out to a waiting van.

"Damn, at least against me he would have a brief fighting chance," the rhino said before he went to his quarters to make his dinner.


	15. The Serval

**Chapter 15: The Serval**

 **In his hour of need, Jake finds an unwilling ally. Yep, she a prostitute and a cat…what is it about this raccoon and cats?**

* * *

Sarah Tipptail had arrived at the strange party in the desert of the Canyonland about half an hour ago with her client, an older warthog who had picked her up down on Grassy Street with promises of a big payoff for an evening of intrigue and sex. Her pimp had made the arrangements, but he also warned her, "The things this guy is into is kinky, weird religious stuff, but pays well and none of the other girls have ever gotten hurt. Just drinking, nip, and a gangbang orgy, this is your chance for some big bucks."

The serval now watched a naked raccoon lying upon the large flat stone as the others danced around it in the flickering torchlight, it seemed he was delirious and talking to someone as he squirmed in his shackles. His black robed captors stood around him and chanted as they spit mouthfuls of rum onto his body. The dancing, chanting, and fornicating mammals around her in their red robes were also reeking of rum, of which many had spilled almost as much of the alcoholic concoction upon themselves as they had drank. She felt herself shoved forward and then onto her knees as someone's paws fumbled while lifting the back of her robe and rudely pulling her tail as he attempted to mount her, it was then that the growing chaos turned deadly.

Whoever was behind her, released her and stumbled backwards because somehow the raccoon had freed himself from the pawcuffs and had leapt off the stone. In his frenzied attempt for freedom, the coon had shoved a tall mammal in a red robe into one of the torches. The tall creature cried in fear and flailed around in panic as his rum soaked robe burst into flames. Engulfed by the fire, the writhing and screaming animal fell into a companion and quickly the flames spread into an agonizing inferno as still others caught on fire.

The sickening smell of burning flesh filled her nostrils as she followed her instincts and bolted into the darkness of the surrounding desert, running away from the fiery scene behind her. Her ears flicked as she heard hysterical screams and curses, but through the cries a loud voice yelled out, "Find and kill him! The coon must not escape!"

Before her was the road and with renewed desperation she ran over the rocky ground towards a shining beacon of hope traveling down that road, a truck! Her ears flicked again as she heard a groan to her left and she glanced over to see the raccoon staggering towards the highway. "Damn!" she cursed as she tried to convince herself to ignore him and run to the relative safety of the approaching vehicle, but in the darkness, she heard voices jubilantly calling out that they had his scent. "Damn it all!" she cursed again, because she knew she couldn't live with herself if she let him get caught and killed. Running to him, she yanked the raccoon back to his feet and pulled him onto the blacktop, the truck was getting closer and she stared at the approaching headlights.

"I hope this is a car full of guys," she whispered to the now unconscious raccoon lying behind her. Knowing that she presented a strange and somewhat sinister sight in her blood red robe, she feared the vehicle's driver might just pass them. With a sigh, she opened the robe and let it drop onto the ground.

"Holy Mother of Lamb!" she heard a young male exclaim from the truck as it screeched a stop. "Damn Bo, that's something you don't see every night!"

Sarah stood there naked in the truck's headlights and called out, "Help me!"

A young coyote wearing a red and yellow plaid shirt, along with fade jeans, opened the driver side car door and asked, "You okay ma'am?" He was joined by another coyote in plain white tee shirt and jeans. A third slightly older coyote in a dark blue workers shirt and khaki pants was standing in the bed of the cherry red pickup truck.

"They're going to kill me and my friend!" she yelled as she tried to pull the raccoon towards the truck.

"We got company," the older coyote yelled as he sniffed the air. "They ain't yotes neither!" "Ain't wolves or foxes, maybe jackals?"

"Come on!" the coyote name Bo barked as he scooped the raccoon off the ground and tossed him into the back of the pickup. "Get in front!"

She swung into the passenger's seat, just as a loud thump was heard hitting the side of the truck. "Gun it Luke!" the older coyote yelled. "They're throwing knives!"

The pickup squealed as its tires burned rubber and sped down the road. She turned and looked back as five black robed grey furred jackals ran out onto the roadway behind them, still desperately throwing their knives at the departing truck. The coyote named Bo had dug into the truck's long crossover toolbox and pulled out a composite bow and several arrows. He drew and fired an arrow at the closest jackal and was rewarded with a yip, but his second arrow missed because they were now almost out of range. "That's for messing with the Eagle Claw Tribe!" he yelled and then howled a war cry.

The truck swerved slightly and she turned looking wide-eyed at the coyote driving, he kept glancing at her. Covering herself the best she could with her paws, she snapped, "Eyes on the road, Furball and not on me!"

"Sorry ma'am," the young coyote guiltily replied, she could swear even in the dark that she could see him blushing. "I've never seen a naked cat before, especially one so beautiful!"

There was a rapping on the back window and she turned to see the older coyote had removed his work shirt. "Put this on before Luke flips us over in a ditch," the coyote yelled. "The pups still a virgin!"

She quickly pulled the larger shirt on and it covered most of her, it had a musky male coyote smell that she actually found rather pleasing. "This better?" she asked the driver.

"Some, but not much ma'am," he panted. "Sorry we yotes can't sweat and so we pant when we get overheated.

"What is causing you to overheat…" she began to ask. "Oh!"

"Luke this little fellers burning up bad and Uncle Jess says to get him to the homestead," Bo yelled through the window.

"Why don't you call the cops?" she asked the driver. "We need to get him to the hospital."

"We do what our Alpha says," he replied, as he tried to keep his eyes on the road and not on the parts of her that weren't adequately covered, he began panting again. "We don't trust the cops and besides the nearest hospital is in Tundratown."

She found herself oddly getting sexually excited. It was a combination of the exhilaration of being chased, along with the musky male canine smell of the shirt, the knowledge that she had obviously made this young coyote horny, and his excited panting. _When this gets over, you're going to need a good rutting!_ She thought to herself. She wanted to giggle as the driver tried to unsuccessfully hide the discomfort he was showing underneath his jeans. _I've never done a coyote before,_ she mused.

The pickup turned off the highway and down a dusty gravel road towards several lights in the distance. As they drew closer, she made out a dozen or so mobile homes and shacks, along with pole barns and storage sheds, in the center was a large circular adobe building. "That's the meeting lodge, we're taking him there," the coyote suddenly said.

Looking out the truck window, she saw a large creek fed pond behind the lodge and fields of crops. There were also a number of coyotes armed with bows standing sentry.

"Whoever is after you two might come looking," Luke growled. "If they do, there'll be hell to pay."

She sat back and sighed. As they drew nearer to the lodge, she saw several older adults standing there waiting, some dressed in their traditional ponchos and wearing long earrings with beads and feathers. She suddenly felt self-couscous about being almost naked.

"Get'em out of there gently boy!" a grey muzzled elder snapped. "Jenny is in the clinic with Granny Beth." Then looking at the cat, he told her, "None of my business why you and the coon were roaming around the Canyonlands nude, but it is my business when someone starts throwing knives at my kin." The truck shook briefly as the coyote pulled out and held up a wicked looking knife.

The door opened and a stout middle aged female handed her a blanket. "Put this on before my youngest pup pants himself to death," she chuckled.

"Ma!" Luke yelped.

"Don't Ma me puppy!" she laughed. "You're almost twenty and still not dating females, so we figured you were gay. But seeing that bulge you're trying to hide tells me you're just into cats. You won't be the first yote in the family that took up with a cat, your great Uncle Festus lived with a cougar for well on twenty years up on Sandy Ridge. Back then the damn prey laws wouldn't recognize their being marked, at least we yotes did."

"Into cats?" she purred as she leaned over and kissed Luke's cheek. Her paw slipped onto his lap and she giggled at his moan as she squeezed. "Yep, into cats."

As she entered the building, she marveled at its construction because it obviously had been here for several generations. The pinkish tan walls were thick and soared several stories with small windows high above to let out the day's heat and the smoke from the burning fire in the building's center.

She smelled mouthwatering scents drifting from one of the rooms, telling her that must be the kitchen. Another room appeared to be a small clinic, she peeked inside that room and saw that the raccoon was laying on a large medical bed with an IV inserted into his arm. "He's been poisoned!" the younger coyote, who must be a nurse, said to an elder. "I'm unsure by what?"

The elder leaned over and pried open one of the raccoon's eyes, after a moment she grunted, "Snake venom, but not from around here." She picked up an egg and muttered a prayer as she passed it over the coon from head to hindpaw and then cracking it into a glass of water, she gasped when they saw the yoke was black. "May the First protect us!" she cried out. "Jess get this coon into a car, he needs to get to Tundratown now! Mildred where's my cell phone, I have to call Olga! Get him in a car now!"

Several younger coyotes lifted the bed and rolled it into a van, the elder, the nurse and the Alpha got in the back with the raccoon and then the van took off down the dirt road at a breakneck speed. "What was that about?" she asked Luke's mother.

"That boy is real sick, so they're taking him to Tundratown," the portly coyote answered. "I guess he's going to the hospital?"

"Can I call for a ride?" the cat asked. "How far are we from a subway or a bus?"

"About a dozen miles to the nearest bus, but its late and the next one is in the morning," the she coyote replied with a smile, "I'll drive you to the Tundratown Station in the morning, but for now get Luke to take you to find some britches and a blouse. I guess Cooper wants his shirt back, because he's only got two uniform shirts. Dinner is in an hour and then we'll find you somewhere to sleep."

She found Luke outside with Bo and Cooper, the young coyote gave her a smile when he saw her. "Your mom said you might be able to find me a pair of pants and a blouse," she told him.

"Su..sure!" he replied. "Come on, my sister is about your size and she's out of town. He led her into a double wide mobile home and down a hallway to a frilly decorated room. After digging through the closet, he handed her a cotton blouse and a pair of jeans. "So this is your sister's room?" she asked him with a grin, he nodded. Walking across the hallway she looked into another small room, this one with posters of race cars, and asked, "Your room?" he nodded again.

Dropping the blanket as she walked into the room, she knew he was looking at her bare tail. Unbuttoning the shirt, she peeled it off and turned to face him naked. "So you really are a virgin?" she asked as she took his paw and pulled him into the room. He started nodding, but she cut him off with a kiss and then she whispered, "Not for long."

A few minutes later, she held him in her arms and kissed him after he finished panting. She had forgotten two important things about canines, that they sometimes howled when they climaxed and that they knotted you together, Luke had done both.

There was a knock on the door and Bo yelled, "Ma said when you two finally unknot, suppers ready."

"Thanks!" his brother called back as she giggled.

"Is your mom going to be mad at me?" she whispered.

"Naw, its only sex," he replied and then added when he saw her surprised look, "We're coyotes and sex is part of life. We're not marked, so we aren't cheating, and we can't have pups."

"No we can't, thank goodness, because you really filled me up down there!" she sighed.

Twenty minutes later she had cleaned herself up and pulled on the jeans, which just fit. The blouse however was too small, so she walked over to Luke and unbuttoned his flannel shirt and pulled it off. Before he knew what was happening, she was wearing it and he was rummaging around for a tee shirt.

As they entered the lodge, the female coyote looked at both her and her son. "Yep, into cats!" she muttered. "I guess you two have worked out tonight's sleeping arrangements, just don't keep the rest of us up with your howling."

She blushed and then felt Luke slip his arm around her waist before he answered, "Yes Ma."

"Good, now let's eat!" his mother nodded.


	16. The Polar Bear

**Chapter 16: The Polar Bear**

 **Sanctuary is offered in the house of one of the city's most dangerous mobsters, as a battle for Jake's soul is fought by unknown forces. Another prostitute, who is also a cat, comes to the raccoon's aid during his darkest hour…really,what is it about this raccoon and cats?**

* * *

Silently, the tall polar bear in the black suit watched as the large moose in medical scrubs and a similarly dressed much smaller arctic hare, struggled to stabilize the raccoon's vital signs. Raymond glanced over at the elderly female bear in a yellow dress and frowned when he realized his Aunt Olga was praying to the Fates for Jake Runnel's soul. Doctor Bullard stepped back from the patient and the moose sighed, "We've done what we can for now, medically he should be fine but he seems to be getting weaker? We should get him to the hospital."

"It wouldn't help!" an elderly she coyote spoke up. "What's killing his body is in his soul and your city medicines won't work." Lighting some sagebrush, she blew the smoke over the raccoon's body.

"Superstitious folk remedies are not going to help either, "the moose huffed.

"There are some things greater than those we know doctor!" a shrew in a black suite spoke. The boss was standing in the palm of an even taller polar bear name Koslov, who was not only Mr. Big's lifelong friend and protector, but also Raymond's clan chief.

The clinic at Mr. Big's huge mansion had been built to take care of his associates who needed medical care without the authorities knowing about it and was state of the art, almost equal to the Tundratown Hospital's Emergency Room.

"Jakie!" a voice cried out in concern as a grayish brown and black tabby highland wildcat in a revealing tight green dress rushed into the room and over to the raccoon. "Dunna ye go dying on me laddie!"

"Miss!" the shrew spoke, "How did you get in here?"

A frantic looking younger polar bear entered the room and answered, "I brought her Sir, she's a close friend of Jake's and Olga said to get a friend of his in here fast. I couldn't get Wilde, because he's a cop and we couldn't find Velt, so I got Meredith from River Street. Jake always said she was like his sister, except for the paid..ah, sex…" his voice trailed off as he looked at the scowl on the shrew's face

"Kevin, be quite!" the elderly bear said as she looked up from her prayers. "You did good! Now Meredith, you need to talk to the boy and keep him tethered to this place."

"Jakie, you've got to come back to me!" she said as she kissed his forehead. Reaching into her purse she pulled out a small bottle and before anyone could react she poured it into his mouth. "Drink this love, it'll bring you a blessing."

"What was that?" the doctor demanded. "What did you give him?"

Raymond moved quickly and grabbed the wildcat in his paws. "Let go of me, you big lunkhead or I'll scratch your bloody eyes out!" she hissed. "That was only water from the blessed pool of Saint Bridget."

The moose sniffed the bottle.

"Let her go Raymond," the shrew spoke. He was interrupted by a gasping sound from the table and the monitor sounded as the raccoon's heartrate suddenly soared.

"His temperature is plunging!" the arctic rabbit called out.

Before the doctor could react, Jake's heartbeat returned to normal, as did his temperature and Raymond almost laughed when the raccoon let out a little snore.

The doctor looked at the monitor and rubbed his antler with a hoof. "I have no idea what just happened?" he muttered. "He just recovered?"

"Faith, good doctor," Olga spoke as she looked up from her prayers. "Faith!"

The cat slipped away from Raymond's grasp and ran over to the bed. "I knew ye were too stubborn to die boyo," she purred as she kissed and rubbed him with her cheeks.

"If you keep doing that Meredith, you're going to embarrass me in front of everyone," the raccoon spoke. "So would anyone care to tell me where I'm at?"

"You are at the mansion," Mr. Big said. "You were found half dead in the middle of the Canyonlands and brought here. I would suggest that everyone leave our young friend here with the doctor and join me in the parlor for a celebratory drink."

* * *

Taking his place by the door, Raymond did not partake in any of the drinking or conversation, he just watched and listened. Mr. Big was pouring on the charm and was having a conversation with the highland wildcat, who was evidently was one of the shrew's many prostitutes.

Hearing footsteps coming down the hallway, the bear gave the worn looking raccoon a smile. Jake had showered and dressed in some of the clothes that he kept at the mansion. The coon was so often a visitor that he even had his own room. "Ah, there's my boy!" the shrew announced as he threw his tiny arms open. The raccoon stepped forward and let Mr. Big kiss his cheeks, as Koslov reached down and patted his back.

"Sorry to have created such a bother," the raccoon said to the crowd as the cat slipped under his arm. "It seems I've gotten myself into a little trouble."

"A little trouble?" Koslov growled "Someone almost killed you!"

"Yeah, these guys are good at killing raccoons," Jake replied with a frown. "They're the same ones who killed Sandy Pondstone and Jasmine."

"We thought you were a goner," Aunt Olga said from the couch. "I prayed that whatever was eating at your soul would be driven away."

"It was like a dream," the raccoon said as he wearily sat down. The elderly coyote poured him a cup of tea. "I was facing something in the darkness and it was trying to get at my very being. It seemed like black smoke, coiled like a snake ready to lunge and I knew if it struck me I would die, but there wasn't anything I could do but watch. There were voices behind me arguing with the snake, then someone growled like a wolf or a coyote and kept it at bay."

"It was Apise, one of the First," the coyote exclaimed.

"They couldn't keep the snake from striking, but then I smelled someone or something else. A feminine feline scent that smelled like grass and heather, like you smell after a shower Meredith."

"Saint Bridget herself!" the cat muttered in awe.

"She came like a great light that pierced the darkness and everything faded to white. Then I found myself standing naked in the snow and above me, the Northern lights danced across the sky. I looked down and there was an attractive female polar bear in a shimmering blue cloak sitting on the hillside and she beckoned me to join her. We sat together and she told me I was safe, that the snake hated the cold. We watched the sky and then she turned to me and after picking up a pawful of snow, she blew it into my face. I was cold, cold down to my very bones and then I got sick. I threw up something from inside of me that was long and smoky. It writhed in the snow before she crushed it and then touching my cheek she told me to awaken," Jake said.

He stopped and sipped the hot tea, sighing at its taste before continuing, "Then I woke up to find Meredith rubbing against me."

Raymond looked at his Aunt Olga and she was crossing herself. "That sounds like Ursula, daughter of the Frost Bear. But she is just an old legend."

"Like I said, it was just a dream," the raccoon yawned.

"I had Manny call Bogo to let him know you are safe, he also spoke with Wilde," Mr. Big said. "Considering his constant problems with the police department's Internal Affairs, I felt that he didn't need me to call him directly."

"Heh, that damned Forrester in IA hates all canids, especially Nick. I'd love to shove his own rack of antlers up his white tailed deer's ass..sorry ladies about my language," Jake replied. "I don't know why I'm so exhausted?"

"I would like you to spend the night in the clinic where you can be monitored," Mr. Big said in manner which was quite clear that he did not expect any disagreement. "As for you Meredith, I will see that you are compensated for this evening, along with a bonus.

"I dinna come here for the money, I came here for Jakie," the wildcat snapped and then her ears went flat. "Sorry Sir, my highland temper sometimes gets the best of me. Thank you for your offer."

The shrew chuckled, "Our friend's adventure has put us all on edge. Kevin will drive you home."

"As for me, I best be getting my kin out of your kitchen before they eat and drink your home empty," the coyote sighed as she stood. "Thank you for your hospitality. Can we give you a ride home Olga?"

"That would be lovely, I hate showing up all the time in a limo," the bear chuckled as she stood up and nodded to the shrew. "Good night Bart, it's been a very interesting evening. Koslov, you need to lay off the sweets dear. As for you Mr. Runnel, please be more careful! Raymond, be a darling and walk me to the door."

Raymond looked over at Koslov, who nodded.

"Now Raymond, you need to keep an eye out for that little coon," Aunt Olga said as she held his arm while walking down the hallway. "If the Frost Bear's daughter, the coyote's Firsts, and a cat saint are involved, that means something big is about to happen that will shake the foundations of both earth and heaven."

"I'm sure that it's less earth shattering then that," Raymond replied with a smile. "But I'll keep an eye on Jake."

As they stepped out into the frigid air of the Tundratown night, their eyes were drawn to the sky as the Northern Lights danced above them in the heavens. "We rarely see the lights this far south," Olga muttered as she crossed herself again.

After making sure his aunt got safely into the coyote's van, Raymond returned to the infirmary and saw the raccoon was already curled up asleep. There was a small noise in the doorway and he looked down and saw Mr. Big's little granddaughter Ju Ju standing there in her pajamas. "We just got home and mommy said Uncle Jake is sick, will he be okay?" she asked.

"He'll be better in the morning," Raymond whispered to her.

"Are you going to stay with him so the bad guys don't get him?" she asked with great concern showing on her tiny face. Ju Ju's real name was Judy and she was named after her godmother Judy Hopps. Jake always took time to play with the children when he visited and was loved by the family. He was also very popular with the bears and the mansion's staff, always taking time to talk with everyone.

"Of course, that's what we bears do," he replied.

"Come along Ju Ju, its past your bed time," her nanny said as she scooped her up. "Jake will be here in the morning, you can talk to him then."

"Kiss Raymond?" the shrew asked as she put her paws up and Raymond picked her up so she could kiss his cheek.

"You promise to keep Uncle Jake safe tonight?" she asked.

"Yes, I will," he promised.

She looked up at him with a questioning look and then nodded.

 _She looks like her mother, but acts like her grandfather,"_ the bear pondered. _She's not at all like that no good father of hers._

He watched her leave and then turned his attention to the sleeping raccoon.

 _It's hard to believe this little guy even brought down a rhino?_ He mused and then smiled as he remembered Jake playing poker with the guys in the kitchen, the playing cards were almost as tall as the coon was and he almost fell out of the chair while fumbling with them. It was mentioned by several of the bears that it was almost like having Wilde back at the house, before he betrayed the boss with that skunk butt rug. Only the fox was a much better poker player, because the little wag at the tip of raccoon's tail always gives him away. Shrugging, he reached over and picked up a magazine.

Around two in the morning, Maurice arrived to take over his watch and he stretched before he began to leave, then he remembered his promise to Ju Ju. "Can't go cousin," he whispered to the other bear. "I promised Ju Ju I'd keep an eye on the coon.

"So go lay down in the other bed," Maurice replied. Looking at the raccoon, who was now comically sprawled out on the other polar bear sized bed, he nodded. After taking off his jacket and shirt, he crawled onto the other bed and soon fell asleep.

He was awake before the raccoon and quickly cleaned up and changed clothes before returning to the clinic. When he got there the raccoon was awake and flirting with one of the maids, an attractive arctic fox.

"It's just a shower," Jake was saying in a pleading voice. "I could use someone to wash my back." He wigged his eyebrows in a comical way that made the maid giggle. It was a tactic he had learned from Wilde.

"I think my husband might not be too pleased, when he found out," she replied as she laid his clean clothes on the bed. The chocolate brown suit, light blue dress shirt, and yellow and brown tie had been picked out by Fru Fru, who loved to buy Jake clothes.

"Husband?" the raccoon sighed. "I'm always too late to get the prettiest ladies." The fox blushed and giggled.

"Quit flirting and get dressed," Raymond grumbled. "The boss is expecting you for breakfast."

With an exaggerated sigh, the raccoon went into the bathroom. About half an hour later, he was dressed and heading down the hallway to the dining room. Raymond and Maurice ambled after him, taking their place near the door.

Maurice was surprised to see both Nick and Judy already in the room, both were in uniform and Nick was joking with the boss.

"Well I see I'll have an armed escort when I leave," Jake quipped as he entered the room. Both the fox and rabbit jumped up and hugged him.

"Bogo said to bring you scrawny…" Nick began saying, then he heard Fru Fru's voice in the hallway with her kits. "He said to bring you back to the station for debriefing."

"After breakfast," Mr. Big interjected.

"After breakfast," Nick agreed.

It took well over an hour for everyone to eat and for Jake to spend some brief playtime with Ju Ju and the other kits. Then finally the fox, rabbit, and raccoon said their goodbyes.

As the three mammals left in the patrol cruiser, Raymond heard Mr. Big telling Koslov, "Have them followed. I want to make sure they get back to the police station safe."

Koslov smiled, "Already took care of it Bart. I also have an assault team in place if needed."

The shrew nodded as he rode the bear's paw back into the mansion.

The bear watched the police vehicle turn onto the main road and sighed. "Raymond'" a small voice spoke from the doorway and he looked down to see Ju Ju standing there in a little pink dress with her paws open. Reaching down he gently lifted the little shrew in his massive paw and brought her up to where she could see him face to tiny face. She indicated for him to lean closer and she kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you for keeping Uncle Jake safe last night!" she said.

The huge muscular polar bear enforcer actually blushed.


	17. The Stoat

**Chapter 17: The** **Stoat**

 **Mr. Big's gangsters follow the raccoon and yes, he gets into trouble again.**

* * *

He was always a capable guy, but as a youth on the city streets he soon learned what most of the members of his species already knew for a fact. In a city that brags that _"no matter what you are—from the biggest elephant to the smallest shrew—you can be anything",_ society is still going to look down upon you because you're a type of weasel and that's why the white stoat in the blue and white striped suit somewhat admired Jake Runnel. The coon had broken out of the stereotype of being either a blue collar worker or a crook and was now a successful business mammal, abet he had to be a thief to get there.

The stoat named Greg Ermineson had started in the mob as a simple messenger and had risen in rank to finally become the leader of the Stalkers, a city wide network of weasels, minks, polecats and martens. There specialty was following and observing, often with cameras at ready to take that incriminating photo which could be used to blackmail their victim for money or even better, favors. A photograph of a judge's indiscreet rendezvous with a female who was not his wife was better than gold for the mob or a photo of a businessmammal doing something of a criminal nature could mean a cut for the Family in a lucrative distributorship. Ermineson's guys are good at what they do and had even brought him a photo of Runnel walking into the downtown Radishton Hotel with what appeared to be a sexy underage brown and white rabbit. He turned those photos directly over to the boss, who hated child abusers with a passion. Fortunately for the raccoon, Boris Snarloff established the rabbit was eighteen and at the legal age of consent, but still the shrew hauled Jake into his private office and had a serious conversation about the coon's sexual appetites and told him need to settle down before he did get himself in trouble.

This morning his team was once again stalking the raccoon and two cops, but not just any two cops, they were Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps. The fox had once been in favor with the boss, much like Jake was now, but he betrayed his trust by scamming him over a deal concerning a rug. Greg wasn't sure what had happened, but it seemed to have something to do with a skunk's butt? As for Hopps, she was a close friend of Fru Fru's and the godmother to the boss's little granddaughter Judy.

Following a police cruiser in Tundratown was never an issue, the stout's network could almost tell you where every cop was in the district at any time. Once on the other side of the Great Wall however, he had to rely on a series of chase cars and that was always a hard mission when it came to following Wilde. The fox had almost a sixth sense for knowing when he was being stalked, a skill learned by living on the streets most of his life.

Leaning back into the sedan's seat, he sighed as he listened to his team report the police cruiser's progress. "Shit!" suddenly spoke a voice over the radio. "We've be compromised, Wilde just waved at me."

"Wave back and stay on their tails," Greg growled. "Wilde is no idiot and knows the boss would be watching out for his favorite coon."

His phone rang and he answered, it was Koslov, "Yeah Joey got made by the fox…damn he's good…we'll stick with them until they get to the station…Runnel knows?..Okay, we'll keep watching." He sighed again and stared out the window.

"Old Slick Nick still has a con's nose!" his driver chuckled.

"Yeah, but Koslov told Runnel to live with us watching," he replied. "He made it clear to him that he had no choice."

"Big's pet coon!" the mink behind the wheel scoffed. "Why's he getting the special treatment?"

"He saved both the bosses and Koslov's lives," the stoat replied. "The Family owes him a life for a life. Besides he's kind of a nice guy."

"He's not in the Family," the driver said.

"Don't call him a pet coon around the boss," Greg warned the mink. "He's almost like a son to the shrew."

"Antonio hates his guts," the driver replied. "He's the son-in-law and unless Fru Fru steps up, he'll one day be the boss. I'd hate to be that coon when that day comes."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," the white stoat sighed. _Shit, I'd follow Runnel before Antonio, that asshole is an arrogant backbiter and not worth the weight of a flea on your butt. Why does the shew hate him so much? He's no threat to him, not like Fru Fru. Too bad that Jake wasn't a shrew, he'd make a great boss…well if he would grow up some more._

They watched as the two officers and the raccoon parked at the First Precinct and went inside the building. About an hour later, a voice called out, "They're on their way back out, it looks like Runnel, the WildeHopps, a tiger and that wolf, what's his name? Oh yeah, Wolford. They'rr loading up into a couple of police cruisers and are pulling out now."

"Drop back, but keep shadowing!" Greg called in. "Tell Mikal, to get his team of bears rolling."

"Affirmative we are on the move," Joey called in. "Target is running east toward on Promenade towards Sahara Square."

"Shit!" the stoat cursed, then reaching for his phone he dialed Koslov. "Runnel is on the move towards Sahara Square, do you want us to drop off or continue. Salazar won't be happy if he finds out we're in his territory," he told the bear. Hanging up, he stared out at the traffic before calling over the radio, "Joey, I'm moving into your position and you guys drop back once we hit Salazar's territory. Mikal, don't cross until we hear back from the boss, I don't want a gang war starting today."

The mink pulled their car ahead of the other sedan. "Wilde is going to see us," he quipped.

"Just drive," Greg answered.

The police cars drove through the ritzy Palm District and turned down towards the Big Dunes. "We're heading toward the coast," the mink observed. "Hey boss, maybe their heading towards Rocky Point Park? I saw the championship bodyboarding completions there last year, some fennec fox named Stone Kole won."

"I hate the heat around here," the stoat complained. "Give me a snowboard any day over the waves, I like my water frozen."

They watched as the police vehicles turned into the park and continued towards the old historic site on the point. "They're going towards the old customs house," the mink snapped. "It's a dead end, no way we can go up there without being seen."

"Drop me off at that stand of trees, I'll go in by foot from here," Greg sighed. "Maybe I can get close enough to see what they are up to."

As he slipped through what sparse underbrush he could find and among the borders, he knew that Wilde had seen him. The fox just smirked in his direction and then went back to talking with the rest of the police officers. Behind them loomed the ruins of the old customs house, a variable fortress which once guarded the barren coast from smugglers. It was now only a series of walls made from boulders and bricks, tumbled scenic ruins jutting out to the very edge of the cliffs that dropped at least one hundred feet to the frothy sea below. The raccoon was arguing with the fox and tiger as they looked down the cliffs. Greg knew there were stories of a smuggler's cave somewhere in the cliff's side, but no one had been able to locate it and so it was just considered a legend.

The stoat heard yelling as the raccoon suddenly swung himself onto the rocks and began to scramble down the cliff with the impressive dexterity of his species. Below him the waves slammed against the rocks, a reminder of the coon's sure doom if he slipped and fell. Lower and lower the raccoon crawled, until he stopped and then swung himself over towards a knotty old pine tree that precariously clung to the cliff with centuries old determination. Holding onto the trunk, the raccoon reached towards the rocks and apparently into a hole. A few moments later, he had a bag in this paw and after transferring it to his teeth, he began his careful climb back up the cliff.

Greg reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pair of binoculars which he trained onto the raccoon who was being helped onto the top of the cliff by the fox. The stoat watched as the raccoon spilled the contents of the bag onto the grass and wondered why anyone would endanger their life for a hunk of black quartz? "We've got company," the mink radioed. "Two large black vans just roared down the road, it doesn't look good."

Turning, he didn't need to train the glasses on the rapidly approaching vans and so he slid further into the rocks, out of view of these newcomers. The police officers looked up at the vans and began dispersing into the ruins, he saw the fox pick up the stone and slip it back into the bag.

"Where's the assault team?" he asked into the microphone.

"Still twenty or thirty minutes away," was the reply from the mink. "They're not going to make it in time."

Looking over at the vehicles, the police were fighting with over a dozen black uniformed grey furred jackals. The tiger was losing to a massive rhino, who had pinned him against the ruin's wall and was now choking him with his hoofs. As he watched, the raccoon had scaled the ruins wall and was pushing on a large boulder above the combatants. The rhino saw him and shoving the tiger aside was now looking up while fumbling for his throwing knife. The boulder broke loose and in a shower of bricks and rubble fell onto the large mammal, with the raccoon riding the stone down like a surfer.

There was a roar as the rhino staggered to his feet and turned to face the raccoon, it was then that the stoat noticed the bloody stump where the massive beast's horn once protruded. With impressive speed the enraged monster snatched the raccoon by the tail and grabbed him with his hoof, pressing him against the wall. _Damn he's going to crush the coon._ Greg thought _, I've got to do something quick._ Then he saw the tiger's large pistol sitting in the grass. Quickly he weaved past the fighting animals until he reached the gun and unable to lift it, propped it against some stone and took aim. His first shot missed, but the second hit the rhino square in his left eye. With a cry of pain, the beast dropped the raccoon and staggered backwards clutching his eye.

The stoat didn't see the rabbit before she leapt at the rhino and smashed a powerful kick right between the beast's legs. The rhino gasped before he stumbled backwards several steps and then slipped on some rubble, sending him tumbling off the cliff's edge and onto the rocks below. Runnel stood and looked around and seeing Greg, he nodded towards his ally before picking up a stone and using it to hit a jackal that was grappling with the fox. A howl broke thought the chaos and the jackals began to withdraw, taking their injured with them back to the vans. There was little the police officers could do to stop them from leaving, although the wolf staggered as he picked up the tiger's pistol and empty the weapon's remaining rounds at the departing vans.

Sliding back into his hiding place, Greg watched as the officers gathered themselves. Runnel was slightly limping, as was the fox, and the wolf was holding his shoulder as he walked to where the tiger was now sitting. The rabbit had run to the patrol car for a first aid kit. For them, the battle was lost but they had survived. _"_ The team is ten minutes out," spoke a voice in his earpiece. "I saw the vans leaving, should I call them off?"

"Affirmative," Greg growled. "We blew it!"

His ears dropped when he heard the rabbit asked, "Who shot the rhino?"

"I think they were shooting at me and missed," Runnel said. The rabbit looked at him in disbelief, but didn't challenge him.

"They got the stone," Nick grimly said as he joined Judy, who was assisting the wounded tiger.

Greg slipped further into the boulders and he quickly worked his way down the cliffside and back towards the main road.

"Let's get the hell out of here," he snapped at the mink. "Head up towards the dunes and we'll watch from there."

Picking up his phone he called Koslov and reported in. He could hear the sounds of an ambulance and police cars in the distance. "This is going to be a long day for all of us," he sighed to the driver.

"Hey boss," Joey called in. "Max and I are following the black vans, you want us to continue?"

"Yeah, but do so from a safe distance," the white stoat answered. "Maybe we'll get lucky after all?"


	18. The Jackal

**Chapter 18: The Jackal  
**

 **The battle has been lost by the ZPD, have they lost the stone to the Others?**

* * *

Tafrara Amastan was born thirty years ago in a small village at the edge of the desert and that night a storm rolled in from the coast bringing much needed rain to the parched land. Lightning punched through the dark night, illuminating the ruins of the old castle which once guarded the strategic pass that controlled the ancient silver trade routes that crisscrossed the Great Sahara. Below the ruins, the villagers huddled in the dark and watched the storm and its fury. In the stormy darkness, she was born to a common couple of simple tan and grey jackals. The midwife gasped as she emerged from her mother, because her fur was almost pure white, only her left paw was the same color grey as her parents. "Call the priestess," the midwife called out to the father. "A Chosen One has been born, tell her to come here now!"

As soon as she was weaned, they took her away from her parents and her village. Her childhood was spent in a monastery in the center of the Nahal River, an imposing stone and mud brick structure that dominated the river's most strategic point. She was raised by the Sisterhood of the Spear, a priestly warrior cult of female spotted hyenas which served the goddess they called the Bright One. From her earliest age, she not only learned how to fight but studied ancient scripts and even modern technology.

"You were born for a reason," her advisor Father Linnaeus once told her. "One day you will find out that reason my little one, but until then you must learn to live." The tall red deer in his black priestly robes would encourage her to dream beyond the expectations that were imposed by others on her life, to explore life to its fullest. With her hyena guardians Nada and Serea, she traveled the world, embracing all cultures and all meeting all kinds of mammals.

It was north of the great city called Zootopia where she met an aged coyote in the Green Mountains. The blind elder held her paw one night as they sat in a flower covered field under the shining moon. "Much is expected of you," he sighed. "But much of this is placed upon you by yourself. The Creator has a path chosen for you to walk, but she who is he does not want you to live only in expectations of what will come, but to live your life for yourself too."

That summer, she found romance with a coyote named Sammy Ravenwood and although it was fated to be short lived, it was intense and she willingly gave him her virginity. I was a magical summer of blueberry wine, country music, and romance in the back of an old beat up pickup truck. It tore her heart when she had to move on, but it was not her future to stay and be another's mate.

From there she traveled to the Great North, a land of ice and snow. At the icy fortress of Norgovia she studied the history of her family and her heritage to the almost mystical ancient King Balder, the wandering arctic wolf who lived a life as a thief, pirate, and mercenary before returning home to bring peace to the once war-torn land. From there, she and her faithful companions Nada and Serea went south to the verdant Eastern Tropical Islands. For several years, she studied the culture of the ancient raccoon society and earned her Doctorate in Archeology.

Her first real job was a visiting professorship at the University of Zootopia, where she lectured on ancient societies and continued her studies. It was there that she received the call about the attack on the Convent of the Holy Light and that a novice named Sister Amanda had fled with the Serpent's Stone to the city. Try as they might, the sister had hidden herself and left few clues of her whereabouts until it was too late. They knew they had failed when news came of the raccoon's ritual murder and her body's crucifixion, but the Stone did not appear and a frantic, but vain search continued by the Others.

Now she watched the fight happening at the old customs house and frowned. She had failed again, after transcribing the documents it had taken her too long to understand the answer was in Smuggler's Code and she arrived too late to retrieve the Stone before the police.

"What the hell is that raccoon doing?" she muttered to herself as she watched Jake behind the fallen wall, he was digging into the ground with his paws. "Smart bastard," she laughed, of course it was too simple. Additional police cars and an ambulance had arrived by the time he had hidden the object and handed another black stone to the surprised looking fox.

 _He's playing the cops too,_ she realized. _This coon's got balls for sure, but he's as good as dead once the fallen priest realizes that he switched the stone._ Two copies had been made of the stone by the Sisters and Sister Amanda had swiped not only the original, but also the two almost identical copies. _I pray to the Bright One, he has picked the right stone!_ She thought.

Leaning back into the shrubbery, she waited as still more police arrived and it was late into the evening by the time they had finally recovered the rhino's body and the CSI team finished their work. The horse was in charge and the detective was very through with his investigation. Finally satisfied, he too left. In the darkness, she changed out of her street cloths and into a pair of dark grey combat fatigues. Armed with only a long knife, she slipped into the night and made her way past the single police cruiser that was patrolling at the end of the park's road. Keeping low to the ground, she made her way towards the old ruins, periodically stopping to scan around to ensure she wasn't being watched.

After what seemed like forever, she found the spot where the raccoon had been digging and after a few minutes she located the crystal he had hidden. _Now to get this to safety_ , she though as she slowly made her way back to her vehicle. Changing back into her street cloths, she climbed into her sedan and pulled back onto the road and drove north towards the Great Wall and fringed Tundratown. It took her about an hour before she reached her exit and wheeled the car down the icy road towards Saint Teresa's Abby, ahead of her the tall onion shaped dome loomed out of the darkness.

The closer she got to the imposing stone building, the more concerned she grew. Things were quiet, too quiet for her liking. Stopping her car at the bottom of the hillside among some snow laden evergreen trees, she changed back into her combat fatigues and strapped on her two unique swords. The blades were made from the finest steel and had been loving made by a master bladesmith from Amir. The type of swords were called a khopesh and are shaped like a sickle. She preferred this sword because it was a traditional weapon of the village where she was born and she felt it gave her some connection to her birth parents.

Stalking through the snow, she smelled blood in the chilled air and frowned when she came upon the body of a guard, the hyena's blood stained the white snow dark red. Drawing her swords, she moved quickly towards the monastery's imposing gates. They had been shattered and the building doors too had been broken open, the stout solid oak planks were hanging from their hinges. A low growl emitted from her throat as she entered the building and saw the carnage within. The marble hallway tiles were strewn with the silent bloody bodies of the Sisters of the Spear. Although there were no bodies of the attackers, there were signs that the hyenas had put up a fight. Blood covered their spears and swords indicating the attackers had paid dearly for their victory, she leaned and tasted the blood and knew it was from a jackal.

Her growl deepened as she entered the sanctuary, there were bodies of innocents clustered by the great alter. These were just worshipers who were unlucky enough to be there at the time of the attack, her eyes narrowed when she realized it was a family of arctic hares who were there for the baptism of their newly born kits. The babies were lying among the bodies of the family, all brutally slain. At the foot of the great alter was he who she had come seeking. The large red deer was on his back, panting from the pain of the torture he had endured. His magnificent antlers had been cut off and he had been disemboweled with three claw like cuts across his stomach, the blood and entrails staining his black robes.

"Father Linnaeus," she cried out as she knelt by his side.

The deer groaned as he weakly lifted his hoof to take her paw. "Beloved one," he sighed. "We have lost! He claims that they have the stone."

"No father, he has a fake. The raccoon fooled him and I have the true stone," she replied.

"Thank the Lion and the Lamb above," he sighed. "They killed innocents here within the sanctuary, cut them down like they were nothing." The deer winced with pain as he coughed up blood.

"You and they will be avenged Father," she growled. "By the Blessed One, I swear."

"No Beloved, do not swear for death. Promise me if mercy is asked, then mercy will be given," the priest groaned. "Swear by the Lamb…" Before she could reply, he shuttered and convulsed.

She looked down into his now unseeing eyes and growled, "I'm sorry Father, but the time of the Lamb is over and it is now the time of the Lion!" Reaching for her unique swords, she drew them and then knelling before the alter she touched the blades to her forehead. Her ears flicked because there were the distance sounds of sirens.

Silently, like a wraith of vengeance, she disappeared into the snowy woods behind the Abby.


	19. The Arctic Wolf

**Chapter 19: The Arctic Wolf**

 **Dr. Amastan has to find a safe place for the stone and goes to the one mammal who can help her.**

* * *

The lean naked white wolf stood in front of his bedroom's window staring out at the moonlit snow. Behind him, a petite arctic fox was gathering her cloths and beginning to dress. He gazed at her reflection in the window, she was attractive and with her being a fox he didn't have to worry about impregnating her. Wolves and foxes were sexually compatible but even though they both were canids, they still were far enough removed to be biologically incapable of breeding. Oddly enough, coyotes and jackals bridged that family gap and could breed with both wolves and foxes.

"Will that be all for tonight Mr. Snarloff?" the vixen asked.

"Yes," he replied as he nodded towards the roll of cash on the table next to him. She smiled as she picked up the money and bowed before turning and sashaying out of the room. Turning back towards the window, he sighed before crossing to the chair and began dressing. As he was buttoning his light blue dress shirt, he walked over to his oak desk and sat down on the overstuffed office chair.

Snarloff wasn't his real name, but it was the northern equivalent of the name Smith and Boris had adopted it over twenty years ago when he was sent south to the city. There were plenty of mammals who had that last name and not all were wolves. Foxes, wolverines, and even polar bears used the name.

A slight breeze indicated that she had entered. "Sloppy cousin," he growled to the almost white jackal in the grey combat fatigues. "But, I was expecting you after I heard the news of what happened at the abbey tonight."

"I really didn't have much of a choice but to come here," she replied.

"No, you did not!" he agreed. "You can sheath the swords, I am unarmed."

"I also don't have much of a choice but to trust you about that claim either," she said with a smile. "Although you could easily try to kill me with the pen that is on your desk next to your left paw."

"If it was my intentions to kill you, you would already be dead," he chuckled as he picked up the pen and put it in the desk drawer.

She sheathed her swords and bowed to him.

"I assume this isn't a social call?" he asked as he stood and bowed back to her. "Rumor is that the Fallen Priest has the Stone, is that true?"

"No cousin," she answered. "He has a fake."

"So he has one of the two copies that were made," the wolf inquired. "How did you pull that off?"

"I didn't, the raccoon did," the Jackal replied. "He hid the real stone and let the jackals steal a copy. Then he gave the other copy to the police."

"Then Jake Runnel still has the real stone?" he asked.

"No cousin, I have it," she answered. "It's hidden for now, but I need a safe place for it to be kept."

"I would infer that would be the Guardian of the North's mansion," the wolf simply stated. "It is the most fortified place in the city."

"Can you arrange that without compromising your duty?" she asked.

"Of course, but your role and the stone's true identity will have to be revealed to the shrew," Snarloff replied with a shrug of his shoulders. "He can be trusted, but not his son-in-law."

She sighed as he walked over and picked up his cellphone. He saw her inquiring look and pointed towards the bathroom, almost silently she gilded out of the room. "Maurice, send an armored limousine and an assault team to my place," he ordered.

Disconnecting, he made a second call, "Sir, I have someone I need you to meet with tonight, it's important…I'm bringing her to you now…It has to do with the attack at the abbey…I would also recommend you place the mansion of full lockdown…please only you and Koslov…thank you!"

He looked up as she entered the room again and watched as she walked over towards him, she sat a cloth bag on the desk. He reached over and pulled out the stone. "Impressive, where did you hide it?" he inquired.

"In your bathroom, about an hour ago," she replied with a grin. "You were busy at the time with the vixen. You really should have been paying more attention instead of pounding into her with such ferocity, I was afraid that you were going to hurt her."

His ears reddened and then he cleared his throat. "My one weakness is my lovers," he sighed. "Kara can be rather noisy."

"So I heard," she laughed. "I was surprised you paid her, I didn't think that…well, pimps paid their whores."

He gave her a withering look before answering, "The ladies work on a contractual bases and Kara is still paying off her contract. Also let's make this quite clear, I am not a pimp and all arrangements are of a business nature with the ladies. The personal entertainment industry may not currently be considered legal, but it is still a profession like any other."

"Is Kara your lover?" she inquired.

"No just a distraction," he replied. His eyes briefly focused on a slightly chewed plastic throwing disk laying on the end table next to his bed. It was a reminder of a passionate week he had with a dingo from Outback Island. They had met on the ski slope and he had lusted for the attractive vacationer. Finally, he wooed him back to his apartment and the two spent the whole week getting to know each other both as friends and then as lovers. Briefly he remembered their first night together, the dingo's tail wagging as he gently grabbed it before he mounted him and how tight he was despite the lube, his slow thrusting into his lover becoming more frenzied before his climaxing and knotting. Afterwards, how he enjoyed the taste of his lover's dingohood in his mouth as he licked and sucked him to a release, filling his muzzle with the salty musky reward. Following their lovemaking, they snuggled contently under the covers and nodded off to sleep in each others embrace. The next day, their morning breakfast plans became a late lunch instead as they lazily explored each other's bodies. When he was gone, it was too late before he realized that he truly missed his lover and so he kept the disk as a reminder of the games of fetch they played in the nearby park. Kara was good, but she wasn't who he really wanted to make love to. "No just a distraction," he sadly repeated. "But enough, we have work to do!"

"If you don't mind, I'll keep this with me," she said as she picked up the stone and slipped it back into the cloth bag. He didn't object as she put the bag into one of her fatigue pants pockets.

"You came in here over an hour ago," he mused. "I do believe that once this is over, I will be having a conversation with Mr. Runnel concerning my security arrangements. He has been warning me that I need to improve my systems. He and I had a conversation three months ago after I found him sitting in the kitchen one morning."

She gave him a surprised look, "He broke in?"

"I challenged him to do so," the wolf replied with a shrug. "I thought we had patched up the opening he discovered."

"Either he's very brave or very dumb," she scoffed. "Considering that he could have been killed, I almost didn't make it in myself."

"That's what I told him," Snarloff chuckled. "He just grinned and told me that if he did not think he could do it, he would not have tried. Then he asked me if I wanted some of the bagels and lox he had brought with him for our breakfast."

The intercom buzzed. "We're ready Sir," a deep voice growled.

The wolf opened the door and stepped into a hallway lined by heavily armed polar bears in black suits. One of the bears visibly flinched when he saw the jackal stepping into the hallway. "She is good Bernard," Snarloff sighed. "She even got in twice without me knowing."

"The raccoon is right," the ashamed bear grumbled.

"So he is old friend," the wolf chuckled. "So he is."

The bears escorted them to the limo. Two large black armored SUV's were parked around the vehicle.

It was very early the in the morning when they arrived at the mansion and she offered up her weapons before they entered the side entrance. The wolf tried not to chuckle as he saw the jackal both calm herself and not to shiver somewhat from fear, although the cold permeating from the rug under her feet did not help matters. Her eyes slightly widened as she realized what might be under the rug. The room around them was dark, with white frost gathered along the window ledges. A painting of an elderly female mole was on the wall, with several candles surrounding a vase of flowers on the table below it. There were only two doors out of the room and both were blocked by the large bears.

"Boris," a deep growl came from the very large muscular polar bear who had just entered the room. "This better be good!"

"Good morning Koslov," the white wolf replied. "Where's the boss?"

"Awaiting us in the other room," the bear answered. "I take it this is one of the Chosen Ones? No games Snarloff, we know about her already and about the stone. Runnel was here in the clinic last night. He was saved in the Canyonlands by some coyotes and almost died of some unnatural and unholy poison."

Before the wolf could reply, the almost white jackal approached the bear and bowed. Her paws were outstretched and holding the stone.

"It's not mine to hold," Koslov dismissed her with a growl as he opened the door. "Give it to the Guardian."

They walked down a warm hallway covered with an ornate rug, the walls were painted a cheery light yellow and there were paintings of sunny pastoral scenes hanging on them. The wolf smiled at the two bears who stood in their way. "Maurice, it's good to see you again. As for you Raymond, you should try wearing a shirt and tie instead of those turtlenecks, it looks more professional," he joked as he adjusted the gold links on his shirt cuffs and pulled on the sleeves of his dark blue suit jacket. "Dress of success and all that nonsense."

The polar bear growled before smiling, "I dress what the old lady puts out for me to wear."

"Ah, marital bliss," Snarloff replied. "I think I will avoid it for as long as I can."

"And here I was going to introduce you to a nice church going she wolf," Maurice laughed. "She'd make you a wonderful mate. She's got a good job too, a line manager at the Bluestar Kibble Factory. But then again, I understand you like someone with a little more brownish tan fur color."

The blushing wolf gave the jackal an aggravated look as she chuckled.

They entered a room with cherry wood paneling and a fire was burning in the ornate fireplace. The floor was inlayed wood parquet and mostly covered by a series of thick rugs. There was a large tweed couch and several high backed chairs facing a huge oak desk and sitting on top of that desk was a matching but much smaller desk. A white stout was standing next to the animal sitting at that smaller desk and as they entered, he slinked away and down some hidden back way out of the room.

The snow white wolf walked up to the occupant at the tiny desk and kissed the ring that was offered to him. Sitting at the desk was a shrew with black busy eyebrows and dressed in a blue pinstriped suit. "So tell me my dear, how may I help you?" Asked Bartholomew Big, Godfather of the notorious criminal Northern Gang and one of the hereditary Guardians of the North.


	20. The Weasel

**Chapter 20: The Weasel**

 **All hell breaks loose at the old wool factory as the Others realize that they've been conned by the raccoon.**

* * *

 _Don't grow up to be a loser like your Uncle Duke!_ Joey Weaselton was told as a child. He still became like his uncle, a small time crook who never could catch a break, that is until one day when he ran into a stoat named Greg Logston. He had attempted to pick the other mammal's pockets, but was caught, however the white stoat was impressed that the weasel was able to get close enough to attempt the crime without being seen and gave him a job as a Stalker. Joey quickly proved his worth by following a prominent judge and recording the elderly impala's illicit rendezvous with an underage buck. He managed to record the whole perverted sexual assault in all its nauseating detail and now the mob had this judge in their pocket. As Greg told him, blackmail is an art and only those with guilty secrets need to worry.

He shivered in the dark as a cool breeze blew across the Meadowlands, much colder the then the weasel would have expected for this late in the spring. The fact he was only wearing a fashionable green polo shirt and khaki pants did not help, like all the Stalkers, he was a student of normcore dressing. They were trained to fit in and not be noticeable, to be just normal. He hunkered down into the brush, hoping that the patrolling jackals wouldn't catch his scent. His partner Max had driven further west, upwind from the decrepit old wool factory building and had set fire to several large rolled bales of hay with hopes of hiding his partner's scent from the canids. As the smoke wafted downwind, the pungent smell confused the guards and the distant flames drew their attention almost as much as the panicked baaing of the ewe who farmed the land.

The security around the old factory was too tight for him to enter the building, but he was close enough to lip read several of the guards comments. Two black vans entered the complex and he watched as a large antlered red deer in a black priest's flock excitedly rushed into the building. Several more jackals in their black combat fatigues followed him, while others unloaded their wounded and dead comrades.

He froze and held his breath as a guard passed nearby, sniffing the air before looking westward towards the flames. He overhead the mammal's radio, "Beta Team says that they got the stone and Alpha Team says the Master has the staff."

"That asshole rhino is also dead," another voice spoke.

"No great loss," the guard whispered more to herself then to the radio. "He was a prick!"

To the west, the flames grew in intensity and the sounds of sirens were heard in the distance as the fire department began to arrive.

"I don't like this!" a voice growled through the radio. "That fire is too close to our operation."

"The Master isn't worried," a voice replied. "He says the world's going to be burning by tomorrow night anyways."

"That is if the stone is real and not just some legend we've been told since being pups," another jackal replied.

"Don't be a blasphemer!" another voice ordered.

The Jackal standing nearby sniffed again and looked westward towards the flames, suddenly her spear flashed downward and Joey rolled away from the blade just in time. "We've been compromised!" she yelled into her radio.

"Shit Max I've been seen!" the weasel frantically called in. "They've got the stone , about sixty Jackals." He twisted and turned with the agility that his species was renowned for as he desperately ran through the underbrush. Suddenly a net fell on top of him, pinning him as he struggled to the ground.

"Bring him to the Master!" a jackal snarled. "Everyone spread out and search the area!" Joey was unceremoniously tossed over a thin but muscular jackal's shoulder and hauled into the factory when he was tossed to the floor. He grunted in pain as they grappled and cuffed his paws behind his back and threw his into an oversized chair.

"So this is our little spy?" the tall red deer in the priestly garb chuckled as he looked down at the weasel with wildly jubilant eyes. "Who do you serve? Maybe it's the police or the ZIA or the maybe the Church?"

"Naw Father, I was just scoping out the joint for our smuggling run," Joey answered. "We are running a little Nip into town, nothing big. I take it you're not with the ZPD, ZIA, or even the Rotary Club?"

A female jackal slapped him across the muzzle. "Respect the Master, you worm!" she growled.

"Should we use the venom?" another guard asked the priest.

"No, we now have the stone and this infidel will be the first to feel its dark flame!" the hart answered with a sinister laugh as he walked towards a table that had been set up as a strange alter of some kin. Instead of having the traditional Lion and the Lamb sculpture in the center of the alter, there was a symbol of a snake eating its own tail. On the table was an oak staff shaped like two intertwining snakes. The priest knelt before the strange alter and chanted as he rocked back and forth. A jackal came forth and knelt as she offered him the black quartz looking stone, which he placed into the tip of the staff.

The other jackals were kneeling and chanting as the priest began to pray, their voices grew in volume as the hart's voice rose to a hysterical yelling. Then he raised his hoofs for silence as he lifted the staff over his antlers and called out in a strange hissing voice, before aiming it at the heavily bound weasel. "Strike the infidel!" he screamed.

Nothing happened.

He lifted the staff again and repeated the prayer before aiming it again, but still no bolt of dark fire leaped from the point.

"The raccoon must still have the real stone!" the priest hysterically screamed. "You brought me the wrong stone!" He lashed out with his hoof and slapped the nearest jackal, who fell back flinching from his anger.

"He must have given it to the police!" the deer yelled. "We must get it back now, gather the followers and call the acolytes. We are taking it by force!"

The female jackal stood and growled, "Are you saying we are going to attack a police station in broad daylight, that's crazy!"

The priest was leaning over to pick up the staff, he rose with a snarl and slammed the large bulky end onto the jackal's head. She crumpled to the floor with a yip, but he continued to beat her with the hard wooden object until her twitching stopped and blood ran from the wound.

"She's dead!" a voice exclaimed. "You killed the Commander!"

There was confusion and angry growling as jackal turned upon jackal. Joey took advantage of the chaos to slip free of the cuffs and desperately run towards the doorway. He made it outside and dove for the bushes, twisting and turning as he wormed his way into the nearby brambles before he finally stumbled out on the gravel driveway.

A car approached. "What the crap just happened?" Max called out from the driver's window.

Hobbling towards the car, the weasel slipped into the passenger's seat. "Get us the hell out of here!" he snapped. "Give me your phone too, I need to call the boss and they took mine."

"All hell's broken loose in there!" the driver yelled as jackals were stumbling out of the building. Groups were arguing with each other and knives were being drawn. There was a loud yip and howling as blood was drawn, then the groups stepped back from each other.

"Sir, they got a bad stone and the priest guy said that they are going to attack the downtown police station to get it from Runnel," the weasel yelled into the phone.

The car pulled out of the driveway and down the road before stopping in a place where they could barely see the building. There were still groups of canines arguing and the red deer exited the building yelling as he was surrounded by a group of heavily armed jackals.

"I wish I could hear what was happening," Joey cursed, but he knew that they could not get any closer.

"I hope the boss is going to warn the cops," the mink added. "This is going to be a massacre."


	21. The Lion

**Chapter 21: The Lion**

 **Bogo calls in some reinforcements for the team. Jake talks with a wannabe hooker, what is it about this coon and cats?**

* * *

"Where the hell has Runnel gone now?" Chief Bogo yelled at the fox. "You were supposed to keep your eye on him Wilde."

The team was standing in the Integration Room and they were looking at the black piece of quartz that was lying on the table.

"He said that he was tired and was going downstairs to lie down and get some sleep," Officer Bob Johnson yawned, the lion almost roared as his jaws opened and he shook his thick brown mane.

"Geeze dude, talk about cat's breath!" Degato laughed, as the other lion leaned back in his chair and adjusted his weapons belt. Chief Bogo had called the two partners in as backup for the team.

"Smells like smoke trout and pickled turnips," Wolford answered as he looked at the lion in expectation.

"Score another one for the K-9 Unit," Bob laughed as he pointed at the wolf. "Damn it must suck to be a wolf when you visit Little Amir. I was eating at a restaurant there and they had this nasty smelling blob of junk they called stinky tofu. It smells like week old burning garbage dipped in rhino piss."

"Hey I like stinky tofu," Nick objected. "Sure it stinks, but the taste is creamy, especially dipped in soy sauce. Carrots won't let me have it anymore, she says my breath smells bad enough when I eat tea smoked fish."

"Enough about your culinary explorations officers," Bogo snapped. "Johnson, go with Wilde and get Runnel."

"Sure thing boss," the fox said as he stood up and gave the cape buffalo a two fingered salute, before slinking out of the room.

The lion followed the smaller fox as they made their way into the back of the station and to booking. "Rudy, how's it hanging?" Nick greeted the middle aged and slightly overweight warthog that was sitting at the desk.

"Still got both of them fox," the boar chuckled. "The wife hasn't castrated me, what about you and Judy? Has she snipped yours yet?"

"Only idle threats my friend," the fox scoffed. "Have you seen a ringtailed bandit roaming around here lately?"

"He's down the hallway, he said he needed a nap," Rudy shrugged. "I told him to pick a cell and make himself at home, Runnels been here enough in the past to know which cell has the best cots."

As the fox picked up the keys and let himself into the hallway leading to the holding cells, the lion leaned against the wall. "Much traffic tonight?" he inquired.

"Nope, slow night so far," the boar sighed. "A few hookers and a biker chick on the ladies side and her partner plus a couple of shoplifters locked up on the other."

"Hey Rudy, I thought you said Jake was here?" Nick asked as he walked back into the room.

"He was?" the warthog confirmed. Then both he and the fox looked at the other door leading to the female cells. "That little bastard, I should taser his scrawny ass for going in there!"

"Ah if you've got the keys, how did he get in and out?" Bob asked.

"We're talking about Runnel and that coon can get into anywhere he wants to!" the angry boar squealed and he stood up and reached for his baton.

"We'll go get him!" Nick quickly said. "Sit down and calm down, Bogo needs him alive."

"He's hell on my blood pressure!" Rudy snapped.

"Come on fuzzy, you're with me," the fox chuckled as he opened the door and looked down the hallway. They could hear a male voice talking from inside a cell.

"Shhh!" the lion hissed as he grabbed the fox's arm with his paw.

"You're telling me you were pimping yourself just to buy a dress?" Jake said in an incredulous voice.

"It was a nice dress and we don't get too much money in the swamps," a feline voice answered. "So I figured that a few quickies and I'd have the money."

"It doesn't work that way!" the raccoon protested. "You're lucky Catpone's guys didn't catch you, that's their territory and you're not one of his girls. They might have beaten you up or even fed you to the alligators."

"I'm a swamp cat, so I know a thing or two about gators," the feline said. "All bite and no brains."

"If you're going to go into the business, you've got to find the local pimp and get a contract," the raccoon admonished her. "You just can't go out and do it without having someone protecting you and you can't take your underage teenage sister along either."

"I wasn't gonna do nothin', a younger voice protested. "I wasn't even gonna watch."

"You sure know a lot about being a hooker," the older cat observed. "Are you a pimp or a hooker? I heard there are males that do it too.

"They're called giegallos or something," the younger cat added.

"They're called gigolos and no, I'm not one of those or a pimp," Jake sighed. "I have friends who are prostitutes down on River Street."

"So you pay for pleasure!" the older cat said with a jubilant voice. "Maybe we can do it right here for the money to buy the dress. We best hurry before Skeeter gets here with bail."

"You're sister is here!" the raccoon protested. "We can't do it in front of her!"

"I'll look the other way," the younger feline voice said.

"No, we aren't going to do anything. Also there are cameras up there," Jake yelled. "Besides, who's Skeeter."

"She's Bobby Joe's boyfriend," the younger cat replied. "He's already going to be pissed at her."

"That bulge in your britches tells me you're interested," the older cat chuckled.

"Again, there are cameras and your sister!" Jake protested. "Move your paw, it's not helping matters."

"Just screw the bitch!" another deeper voice brayed. "You three are giving me a shitty headache, damn preds."

"Shut your stripped pie hole!" the older feline voice hissed. "I'm fixin to come over there and scratch you three ways to Sunday."

"Try it and I'll stamp your swamp pussy…" the other voice began to yell back.

"Jake what the hell are you doing in here?" Nick laughed as he stepped into the room. Bob was right behind the fox and wanted to laugh when he saw the raccoon lying on the bench with his head in a wildcat's lap. She was dressed in a plaid shirt and a very short pair of cut off jeans. One of her paws was scratching between his ears, but the other was between his legs. Standing in a corner was a younger cat in a faded old t-shirt and a pair torn jeans.

"Shit, I didn't know this damn city could get any worse!" a rough looking female zebra grumbled. "Now they let a candyass fox become a cop."

Nick casually leaned against the wall and smirked at the zebra. "Nice tattoo on your arm, it looks familiar doesn't it Officer Johnson?"

It took the lion a moment longer to suddenly remember the photo. "Why yes Officer Wilde, that looks just like the one in the photo from the Quick Pick Mart's camera. You know of the zebra who shook down that poor elderly wallaby a week ago," he replied. "I guess we need to call the detective in charge of that case. Oh, you'll like him sweetheart because he's a cougar…a cat like the ladies and me."

The zebra replied with some very unladylike curses.

"I guess it's time for me to go," Jake sighed. "Nick, do you have the key or should I just let myself out?"

* * *

Johnston followed the now squabbling fox and raccoon back into the interrogation room. _I think it's naptime for both those two,_ he thought to himself. _We all thought that Judy was just a public relations stunt when he was assigned to the unit. But we were wrong about Judy and soon found out we were wrong about the fox too. Jake on the other paw, well it will be interesting to see how long he stays on the straight and narrow. I hate for Nick's best friend to end up back in jail._

Officer Bob Johnson was a second generation cop. His father had retired after over thirty years in the ZPD and his older brother Captain Ronald Johnson now serves with the Twelfth District. When he graduated from the academy, the lion worked as a patrol officer with the Forth for three years. He and his usual partner, the big tiger Hal Jackson came to Bogo's attention when they talked down a street fight between a gang of Tigers and a group of Black Bears. Because Officer Jackson was a tiger, he wasn't trusted by the bears but Johnson was and the two brokered peace between the two species. Soon afterwards, both officers were transferred to the First and Chief Bogo's Special Unit. He and Delgato had recently worked with Frangmeyer, Wolford, Wilde, and the late Officer Phillip Barsto hunting down an elusive war criminal, a tiger who went by the name of Birendra. Their case ended with the tiger's death and the subsequent murder of Officer Barsto. The spotted hyena's murder still remains unsolved because the case was reassigned by the mayor to the ZIA, much to the anger of the unit and most of the ZPD.

"So I reckon that this is a larger conspiracy than we all thought was going to be," Detective Oates reported. We've got three raccoons sacrificed, Jake kitnapped, and then there were two attacks on our team by the jackals. In addition, there are a couple of badly burned folks from a supposed bonfire incident in the Canyonlands, but I'm fairly sure that is somehow tied into Jake's being up and taken."

"Just what is this stone supposed to do?" Fangmeyer asked as he poked at it with a pen.

"The stone is supposed to bring down the fiery wrath of a snake god called Ouroboros," the horse replied. "Some old god feller who's be plaguing mammal kind since the dawn of time. The story goes that the stone can fire some sort of black lightning."

"I wouldn't write off this as a story," Jake added and then shrugged. "I'm just saying that they've been after this stone for a long time and have been killing raccoons every twenty-one years. This needs to be brought to an end and if the ZPD can't do it then I will find someone who can."

Chief Bogo glared down at the raccoon before answering, "You are not going to take the law into your own paws, understand Runnel!"

"They killed Jasmine…they killed Sandy…they killed a nun…all because they were raccoons," Jake snarled back at the much larger buffalo. "When you do bring someone down for this, I'm expecting it to be treated as a hate crime too!"

"The District Attorney makes those calls," Bogo answered. "You and I don't!"

The lion watched with amusement as the raccoon jumped up on the table across from where the cape buffalo was sitting and started to angrily march towards the larger mammal.

"JAKE RUNNEL!" a female voice yelled, catching everyone's attention. The raccoon froze and looked down at the rabbit, who was looking up at him. "Get off that table and sit down now!"

"But!" Jake began to protest.

"NOW!" Judy snapped.

With a sigh, the raccoon walked back across the table and jumped down onto his chair.

"How many times have I told you to fear the fluff?" Nick added. He was casually leaning against the wall with a smirk on his muzzle.

"Ah reckon, we can get back to business," Oates said as he continued his briefing.

The lion cast a look over at the raccoon and could see the little guy was still seething, but had calmed down enough.

* * *

 **Officer Phillip Barsto was the ZPD's first and so far only spotted hyena. He was one of Judy's classmates in the Mammal Inclusion Initiative and he was murdered as part of an ancient honor killing due to his late father's actions in the Western Cape Republic. For more about Phil Barsto, read** _ **Sins of Our Fathers.**_


	22. The Shrew

**Chapter 22: The Shrew**

 **Mr. Big and Boris Snarloff come to an understanding as plans are made to put an end to the False Priest.**

* * *

Bartholomew Big, Godfather of the notorious criminal Northern Gang and one of the hereditary Guardians of the North watched as the snow white wolf walked up and kissed the ring that he offered to him. Sitting at the desk the shrew with black busy eyebrows was dressed in a blue pinstriped suit. He tried not to growl as asked the almost white jackal, "So tell me my dear, how I may help you?"

Tafrara Amastan bowed deeply towards the shrew. "I have come seeking your assistance," he replied. "I am one of the Chosen and I have the Serpent's Stone."

"Ah, so the False Priest did not get the stone from the police?" Mr. Big said as he sat straighter in his chair. "And why do you come here, what is it you seek from me?"

"I seek a safe place for the stone until this is over with once and for all," the jackal answered. "You are the Guardian and…" She stopped as the shrew lifted his paw.

"It is your place to bring this to an end, not mine," the shrew growled. "But I will assist you because twice those under my protection have been killed, murdered by this creature and he attacked someone who I have a life debt due. He and his minions have dared attack a holy place here within my territory, I will have revenge. So Chosen One, I will offer you my alliance to end this once and for all."

Tafrara knelt and after withdrawing the stone from her pocket, offered it to the Guardian. "My dear, I think that the stone will be safer inside the mansion's vault. Koslov, please escort the good doctor and to the vault and see that this is secured inside the safe. Boris stay here, you and I have much to discuss."

He watched the jackal and the much larger polar bear as they left the room. Then turning, he looked over at the arctic wolf, who standing in the back of the room. "Take a seat, my friend," the shrew said as he waved his paw to a nearby chair. "How long have you been in my service?"

"Almost twenty years, since I came here from the North," Boris replied.

"You have proven yourself most capable and for your service I thank you," Mr. Big continued. "But let's make all things clear, I am not so foolish as not to know who you really are and why you are here. This new…situation…has made it past time for us to come to an understanding."

The wolf sat and impassively looked at the shrew, he did not show any of the fear that he felt.

"As I am a Guardian, you are a Watcher," Mr. Big sighed. "Just like Doctor Amastan, you are of his blood. Both of you are the blood of the great Baldor, he who was the legendary first and only King of the North."

"I won't deny it Sir," the wolf replied. "How long has your family known we existed?"

"We have always known from the beginning, when Feofan answered the Great Riddle and became heir to the throne. Our families have played this game for generations, but times have changed," the shrew shrugged his tiny shoulders. "Your family has kept most of my ancestors in line, except for my predecessor of course. His cruelty knew no bonds and led to my overthrowing his reign of this town. Your family did not stop me back then, why?"

"You saved us from acting," the wolf replied, his ice blue eyes stared at the shrew's. "Tundratown is a minor place compared to the other lands that your family rule, but it is still part of the Northern lands and we care for those who live here. When you took over his criminal enterprises, we were concerned that you would continue down the same path."

"But I have, so why have you not acted to stop me?" the shrew asked.

"Because what you do is not done for yourself only, but those who live here," Boris answered. "You use the Family to better the lives of those under your care. Compared to the rest of the city, Tundratown is safer and the many charities you have developed care for those in need. So a balance is met."

The shrew looked over at the window and watched the snow falling outside. The crackling of the fire was the only sound heard in the room.

"Does Koslov know?" Boris finally asked.

"No, he does not," Mr. Big replied. "If he did, he and his clan would do their duty and kill you."

"Why haven't you done that already," the wolf continued.

"Balance must be met and you are the balance to my family," the shrew answered with a shrug. "We both serve the children from the north and that is our duty, when one of us fails then it is the other's place to correct that failure. The good of the children is what we must hold above all others."

"Then I am at your service," the wolf replied as he knelt on one knee.

There was a knock at the door and the shrew flicked his paw towards the wolf, indicating for him to take a seat. "Enter!" Mr. Big called out.

The door opened and Koslov entered, he cast a suspicious eye towards the wolf. Behind him was the jackal. "Locked up Boss and I've posted extra guards at the vault, including a few foxes and badgers," he said. "Their noses might help sniff out any attempts to get at the stone."

"Thank you old friend," Mr. Big said with a smile. "I can always count on you. Boris and I have been talking about what we need to do to stop this False Priest. Everyone take a seat and let's finalize these plans."

* * *

It was many hours later by the time they finished their planning and there was some disagreement at first, but in the end all agreed that Boris would be in charge of the operation.

"I'm still not sure why you insist that Jake has a say about the fate of the priest?" Koslov grumbled to his best friend, the shrew, as they sipped on early morning coffee. "I doubt he has it in him to kill the bastard."

"I know, but it was his species that these so called Others have been killing since one of their kind stole the stone all those hundreds of years ago, Bart sighed. "If they had been bears, wouldn't you have insisted that you had a say in his fate?"

The polar bear nodded, but then added in a sad voice, "I just hope it doesn't change him, killing has a way of destroying a mammal's soul, we know that don't we!"

The shrew looked up sighed again, "But enough of this, it's time for breakfast and I don't want Fru Fru to know what is going on, it will worry her."

"Antonio does not need to know either," the bear snarled. "He needs to stay out of this for now."

The shrew set down his coffee cup and looked out of the window again as the morning sun shimmered off the newly fallen snow. In the distance he could see the guards making their rounds, the armed bears in their black suits walking among the staff members who were shoveling the snow off the paths and wiping off the ice sculptures in the garden. A group of young cubs played in the snow as they ran towards the bus shelter to await the school bus. Picking up his cup, he looked down in disgust at the cold brew and sighed yet again before he answered, "Agreed for now, old friend."

Offering his paw, Koslov smiled as he shrugged. "I hope there are kippers for breakfast, I have a taste for fish," he chuckled as his best friend stepped into his palm.

"Life was so much simpler when I was just a businessmammal, before I took over the Family," Bart sighed. "I miss those days."

"Yeah, but your uncle was a bastard and needed to die," Koslov replied. "Come on, I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry, Snowball!" the shrew teased his friend and laughed.

"Can it Bushybrows!" the bear teased back with a chuckle.


	23. The Ram

**Chapter 23: The Ram**

 **The mob's plan begins to take shape but quickly changes.**

* * *

Ralph gently butted his wife's forehead, a sign of affection among their species, as he reached over a put a hoof on her swollen belly. "Are you sure about this?" Sarah asked, her eyes showing her concern for her mate's decision.

"Yeah, the boss called in backup for the bears," the ram replied with a forced smile. "We're just running interference until the big guys hit 'em."

"I know you've been in a scrape or two before while doing collections, but this?" the ewe asked as her hoof traced along one of his large curled horns.

"You know I can hold my own," he answered with a chuckle as he drew her closer to his body. "You of all mammals know that."

"Not the same thing, you horny ram!" she replied with a grin as his hoofs gently traced along her petite spiky horns.

Since he graduated from high school, Ralph Thumpersnout had worked one job or another for the Family. He currently works as a collector, his job is to pick up payments for the protection racket the mob runs with the local businesses. It isn't a hard job because only a hoof-full of the stores cause a little trouble. Most businesses are more than willing to pay, to be under the protection of the Northern Mob meant that no one, absolutely no one in their right mind, would rob your place.

His partner is a young caribou who had recently arrived from the steppes and had a thick northern accent, but a wicked sense of humor. The mob preferred using prey animals for this type of work because they were less intimidating. If things did go wrong, a couple of white polar bears in black suits would arrive and they were intimidating.

He left Sarah at the door as he climbed into the white sedan that the caribou was driving. He could tell his partner was nervous. "Why us?" the buck asked. "We are not enforcers."

"Word is that they are calling in everyone for this job, even some snowshoe hares," Ralph replied.

"We will be up against jackals and those chompers are dangerous," the deer mumbled. "Like wolves but smaller."

"More like coyotes with bad manners," the ram laughed. "We can handle it."

"Da, so you say my friend," the buck sighed. "If anything happens to you, I'll have to face Sarah."

"Better you than me!" the ram quipped. His partner did respond but looked silently ahead at the snowy street. "We'll both be fine."

After a few minutes, the deer shook his horns and muttered, "All our lives are in the paws of the Fates anyways."

Ralph quickly crossed himself and then looked out the car's window at the warehouse they were approaching.

The group met in a large room inside of the warehouse where a council had been called. A white wolf was talking to two hulking bears and a white stoat. Ralph knew the white wolf from reputation only and he knew that Boris Snarloff was considered one of the most dangerous members of the Family. There was a story that a grizzly bear had murdered several rabbits in Tundratown just for fun and that the mob had grabbed him off the streets before the cops. The bear was unrepentant, even when hanging upside down over the hatch leading into the icy river below, boasting that he was too big to fit. The wolf had been watching as the bear laughed and spit at the boss, so he went into the potter's shed and returned with a chainsaw. They say that the still living bear fit into the hole by the time the wolf finished.

"We've brought in as many different associates as we could muster," the stoat said. "Hopefully by mingling with the morning crowd, we can get the civilians out of harm's way before the enforcers hit the jackals. "

"Good, that's the plan," Boris Snarloff nodded. "What are the numbers we're facing?"

"There are only a dozen or so jackals who stayed with the priest," the stoat replied. "He's lost most of his so-called flock already. I have no idea about this army of so-called acolytes we can expect. We've interviewed a few of the hookers who were at the last ceremony, you know the one that Jake escaped from, these acolytes they saw weren't fighters but fat old businessmammals who were there for the kinky sex and drugs."

"Any guess?" Maurice asked as he bent closer. "It would be nice to know how many my bears will have to take down."

"No idea, we have no way of know how many will show," the stoat replied. "We know the Others have been around since the turn of the last century."

"Afterwards, everyone has to get out!" Snaroff growled. "We leave no one behind for the cops to catch." The two bears nodded.

"How's this going to happen?" the stoat asked. "I mean do the cops know they're bait?"

"No, but Jake does," the wolf sighed. "He'll be leading his friends into the jaws of death if this fails."

"I didn't know he had it in him to do so?" the bear pondered. "Maybe we've been underestimating him?

"He really doesn't," the wolf replied. "He just knows that if the Others do what they are planning, a lot more innocents will die."

* * *

" _All that planning and preparing for nothing,"_ Ralph thought from within the crowd as he watched the events play out from before him.

The large red deer in the priest's robes stood in front of the bus full of children. "Give me the stone!" he demanded. Around them, the police had cordoned off the street and the SWAT team had arrived. It was just the priest and a handful of his followers, grey-furred jackals in black fatigues, who were near or in the bus. The so-called army of acolytes that he was counting on didn't show, those mammals who came to the ceremonies apparently were there just for the orgies and they turned out to be heretics. So the fallen priest changed his tactics and had highjacked two buses full of schoolchildren that were on their way to the Museum of Natural History. "The stone, now or I blow up the buses."

 _He'll kill himself too?_ The ram thought as he peered through the crowd. _This doesn't make sense, he has no exit strategy. How is he going to get out of there after they give him that stone he keeps asking for, the cops will grab him?_

The buses were parked in front of the downtown business district and Police Chief Adrian Bogo stood in the middle of the street, looking at the priest. "What is my guarantee that you won't blow up the buses if I give you the stone?"

"None," the wild-eyed priest laughed as he held up a hoof with a button. "But do you really think you have a choice? This is a deadmammal's switch, once I let go the bombs will explode."

"They'll kill your followers too," the uniformed cape buffalo replied.

"My flock is prepared to die for the glory of Ouroboros!" the priest called out in a jubilant voice. "Our god will cast down your false gods and bring a new era of the truth!"

"You kill those kits and I'll see that you will die also," a well-dressed raccoon said as he walked up next to the much larger bull. "I owe you for killing my friends and for trying to kill me."

"You raccoons started all of this!" the priest screamed. "Your kind took the stone and kept it away from the true followers. Ouroboros will see that you and all of your damned species roast in hell!"

"Give him the stone!" the raccoon snapped as he gave an almost sinister smile as he adjusted his tie and the cuffs of his suit jacket. "We'll see who roasts in hell."

An older stallion in a rumpled grey suit stepped forward with what looked like a black quartz stone and approached the priest.

"Ah reckon this is what you are wanting," the horse said. "You take the stone and give me the switch, no need for anyone to die."

"Now!" the priest snarled and two jackals holding knives to the throats of two children exited the bus and stood next to the red deer. "The stone or they die first."

The detective handed the stone to the mad priest, who was now laughing. "Give me the switch now," the horse said.

"Now you will all die!" the priest yelled as he held the stone in the air.

A white blur seemed to bounce off the hood of a car and there was a silvery flash as a white jackal in grey combat fatigues landed behind the two grey jackals, their now headless bodies falling backward. She twisted and a sword flicked out again, chopping the deer's hand off at the wrist. The hoof holding the detonator began falling but was caught by the agile white jackal who held the button down. She snarled as the priest screamed in pain and ran into the crowd.

Ralph turned and ran after the red deer, following him into the alleyway. He charged horns down and rammed into the priest, sending the red deer sprawling onto the pavement. Blood from the hart's hoofless arm splattered across his chest as he held the obviously insane mammal down. A pair of large white paws reached down from behind and shoved him off the priest and the ram looked up to see two large white polar bears in black suits looking down at him.

The bears hauled the sobbing priest down the alley and into a waiting car. As Ralph stood, he heard a voice behind him. "Good job pal," the white stoat said as he picked up the stone that the hart had dropped. "I'll let the boss know you were the one to catch him, there should be a nice bonus for you. Now get lost before the cops get here."

Ducking down the alleyway, the ram disappeared into the crowd and made his way downtown towards Herd Street. Hopefully, his partner would be waiting there to take him home to his wife.


	24. The Jaguar

**Chapter 24: The Jaguar**

 **The attack in downtown as witnessed by another party**

* * *

Like Tundratown, the Rainforest District has a unique mammal controlled environment. Sprinklers hidden in artificial trees keep the air and ground almost constantly moist, allowing for the lush jungle growth. Renato Manchas awoke and stretched his slender black furred body, he had a good night. In the bed beside him a naked spotted jaguar stirred and rolled over, pulling the black jaguar into his arms. Reaching up, the other cat's paw traced the scars across his left eye. "Great pick up line Renato," he purred as his other paw pulled his head closer for a kiss.

They had met in a bar the previous night, Renato was sitting in a booth reading the latest copy of Fancy Cat Magazine while sipping on a glass of cognac, when he was approached by the other cat. The handsome spotted jaguar was dressed in a black silk short sleeved shirt and charcoal grey pants. "Hines is the best cognac," he simply stated. "It's too bad they do not have it here."

Renato smiled up at the other jaguar, "I take it you are a connoisseur?" That question led to more conversation as the black jaguar invited the spotted cat named Samuel to join him at the table. They both knew what they wanted and after a few more drinks, they left together.

Paws explored each other's bodies as the spotted jaguar pulled him closer, Renato could feel other cat begin to harden and rolled onto his stomach, lifting his tail up and awaited with excited expectation the cat's intentions. But then the phone rang and that ringtone was telling him it just wasn't the office, but the boss. With a disappointed growl, he rolled over and reached for the phone. "Good morning sir…I'll be right there…let me just get dressed and I'll be on my way, but traffic will be bad…of course…"

"Work?" the spotted jaguar sighed with disappointment as he sat up holding an open condom packet in his paw.

The black furred cat nodded, but then looking down between the other jaguar's legs he smiled and rolled back over. "Just make it quick, I still have to shower and dress," he purred as he coyly twitched his tail.

* * *

They didn't expect him to get involved because the boss knew he wasn't a scrapper or even a member of the Family, but he was one of the best driver's in the city. Instead they assigned him to specially modified sedan that they nicknamed the Family Car because it was somewhat armored and had a very…very powerful engine. His job was that if things went wrong, was to get the raccoon out of the way and if possible, Nick and Judy too.

Now he watched the events as they transpired, the mobsters were expecting an attack on the police station, but instead the tall red deer and his jackals held a school bus hostage. The attackers were surrounded by SWAT team members with their high powered tranquilizer guns aimed at them, but the priest confidently walked out in front of the police and demanded a stone. The jaguar leaned forward as a horse in a light grey suit stepped out from amongst the police holding what appeared to be a chunk of black quartz.

"I'll blow up the bus!" the hart screamed as he stepped backwards, there appeared to be a detonator in his left hoof and he clutched the stone in the other. The police hesitated as couple of the grey jackals in black combat fatigues stepped in front of their leader with knives to two of the student's necks.

The white jackal in the grey combat fatigues seemed to have come from nowhere as she bounced off the hood of a car and there was a silvery flash as her swords chopped off the heads of the surprised grey other jackals. Before anyone could react, she twisted and her sword struck out again, chopping the deer's hand off at the wrist. She caught his hoof still holding the detonator before it fell and held it tight in her paw as she knelt at the foot of the detective. The priest stumbled backwards, blood from his hoofless wrist spraying the ground and he turned and desperately ran into the crowd.

There was the popping sound of the SWAT's team's rifles and the remaining jackals fell under a hail of tranquilizer rounds. "Dammit I hit him, but he must have a vest," one of the offers yelled. "He's in the crowd."

Officers rushed forward toward the bus and began pulling students out to safety.

"We lost the bastard in the crowd," there was a yell.

Looking back he saw Jake smiling as he spoke into his phone while he began walking towards him. Moving to the passenger side of the sedan, the jaguar now opened the car's door. The uniformed fox quickly ran over and grabbed the raccoon's arm. "You can't kill him," Nick growled. "Please promise me that!"

"Why?" the raccoon snapped back. "He killed Sandy…he killed Jasmine…he killed them because they were raccoons, he deserves to die!"

The fox looked at his best friend and sighed, "Because you're not a killer Jake, it will destroy your soul."

The raccoon looked at his friend and pondered for a moment of two before replying, "I promise I won't kill him." He winced as the fox's grip momentarily tightened as he looked him in the eyes. Then with a nod, Nick released his arm and stepped back.

* * *

It took them forty minutes to arrive at the place they were expected, the sun had set as he pulled off the road and down an icy side street. He angled the car off the road so that its headlights illuminated the frozen pond below and now he silently waited as events transpired.

He watched the red deer blinking as the hood over his head was removed and then his bonds before the raccoon stepped away. "Are you going to kill me?" he heard the priest ask as he winced holding his now bound but bloody wrist. The two mammals were standing in the center of a frozen lake, the boards that connected the platform to the shore had been withdrawn and were piled up in the shore.

"The funny thing about this pond is that unlike most the lakes and ponds in this area of Tundratown, Meyer's pond never really freezes solid," the raccoon answered. You see you're standing in the center on a small log platform and I'm standing on the ice which is barely holding my weight. You're at least three times heavier than I am so I wonder how long it'll hold your weight?"

The deer's eyes widened as he looked from where he was sitting.

"Now if you stay perfectly still for the remainder of the night, you should survive until someone sees you in the morning and calls the police," the raccoon added as he carefully stepped around on the cracking ice. "That is unless you freeze to death first."

"What do you want with me?" the once priest screamed. "You can't leave me here, its murder!"

"No murder is stripping a raccoon naked and raping her before you strangle her to death, all in the name of some perverted religion," the raccoon snarled back as he walked carefully towards the shoreline.

"Don't leave me!" the deer wailed.

"I'll tell you what," the raccoon suddenly said as he stood on the shoreline. "I won't leave you alone." Tossing the chunk of black quartz onto the ice, he added, "Here's your godforsaken stone, call on your damned snake god to save you!"

The stone slid across the ice before stopping at least a dozen paces from the deer. The fallen priest's eyes flashed with fanatical triumph and he jubilantly called out, "Fool, Ouroboros will save me and destroy you!"

The raccoon turned his back to the deer and began walking towards the black jaguar standing outside the waiting sedan. "You know the funny thing about snake gods?" he asked no one in particular. "They are cold blooded and hate the ice." He continued walking up the hillside without pausing or looking back. There was the sound of cracking ice and screams of panic, along with frantic splashing. The priest cried out to his god, before the splashing ended and the night became silent again.

"I thought you told Nick that you would not kill him?" Renato asked.

"I didn't kill him," the raccoon grimly replied. "I just didn't save him."

The jaguar looked over the raccoon at the broken ice and there was now no sign of the priest or the stone. His eyes shifted to the hillside beyond and at the white wolf, who along with several polar bears were watching from the darkness. It was then that he realized the priest would have never survived the night, even if Jake allowed him live.

"Where to boss?" Renato inquired as he held the door for the raccoon.

"Home," the raccoon sighed as he wiped his eyes with his paw. "Home to River Street, I need some company of the feminine type."

"Very good Sir," the jaguar replied. "I'll call ahead and arrange everything."

"Tell Jerry to find Meredith," Jake nodded. "I'll need her all night." Then stopping, he looked up at the jaguar with the scarred face, "Thank you Renato, you've been a good friend."

"You're Nick's best friend," the jaguar replied with a toothy grin. "He and Judy saved my very soul by solving the Nighthowlers case and that is a debt that I can never repay."

As he pulled the car down the road, Renato looked up and marveled at the intensity of the Northern Lights as they shimmered across the night sky, then suddenly they just faded away leaving only the moon and stars.


	25. The Wildcat

**Chapter 25 The Wildcat (Lemon Warning)**

 **Jake seeks solace in the arms and other parts of a friend. Nick is sent by Chief Bogo to find him.**

* * *

The highland wildcat insisted on the best room that the seedy motel had and ironically it was Jake's old room where he had lived prior to his arrest and incarceration. She had showered and groomed herself in anticipation of his arrival, washing off the scent of all the other males she had been with earlier that night, she was after all a whore. Her clean medium green tight fitting dress played off her green eyes and highlighted her curvy greyish brown and black tabby furred body. Her pimp Jerry wasn't happy that she was pulled off the streets on such a busy night, but the orders came directly from Snarloff. He also knew from the wolf's tone that something had gone wrong for Jake and as before, the raccoon was running back to where he felt safe and even loved.

They didn't speak much when he arrived, but instead he stripped and took her in his arms. Almost in desperation he threw her onto the bed, mounted her, and began plowing into her with a ferocity that she knew he had when he was angry with himself. Afterwards, they stayed with her hindpaws tightly wrapped around his back, locking them together as he panted and then surprisingly began to cry.

He didn't withdraw, but they stayed entwined together, her paws rubbing his shoulders. "I killed someone," he sobbed. "I left him to die and I didn't care."

"Shush laddie," she whispered. "You did what needed to be done, your no killer boyo."

"I'm no saint," he sniffled. "But what I did tonight, I'm sure that your Saint Bridget would be ashamed of me."

"Ach Jakie," she sighed. "The thing about Saint Bridget is that she's a warrior saint. It's said that she slew at least a dozen bandits in her lifetime, including her cousin who raped her. So I dinna think you need to worry your bonnie head over her disapproving."

"Damn highlanders," the raccoon softly chuckled as he nuzzled her neck fur, breathing in her scent. "You smell good tonight and I don't smell any of the others you've been with earlier."

"I can clean up boyo," she sighed before his kiss cut her off. She felt him begin to stir. "You're a wee bit insatiable tonight, luv?"

He lifted his head as this time he slowly made love to her and looked her in the eyes. "Marry me?" he asked.

"Ach you've got a bit old scratch in you for sure!" she snapped as she tried not to moan. "You asking a lassie to marry you while you're poking her a good one."

"You didn't say no," he replied as he picked up his pace.

"You know the answer is….noooo!" her head snapped back with a moan. "Would you no do that…again…while I'm…bloody…." A gasp cut off the remainder of what she was trying to say.

He smiled as she agilely twisted herself until he was pinned beneath her and they both savored every moment of their mating. After they were finished, she leaned forward and touched his nose with hers. "The answer is still no, Jakie. I know you boyo even better then you know yourself and you want children of your own, that's something I can't give you." The raccoon's ears flattened and he sighed. Straightening up, the cat giggled as she added. "Besides you know I like variety and although you are a wonderful lover, I'd get bored."

"Hey!" the raccoon chuckled as he grabbed her shoulders with his paws and pulled her closer for a kiss. "Come on confess, I'm the best you ever had."

She kissed him and nuzzled him before answering, "Well you're in the top ten boyo."

"Top ten! I've got to know…am I number one or two, surely in the top five!" he laughed.

"Okay, laddie you are in the top five, but I tell you no more because a lassie must have her secrets," she purred. Then grimacing, she looked down to where they were still joined. "If I knew we were going bareback I would have got a towel, this is turning into a mess."

"I'll buy old Bill a new bed for the motel," he shrugged. "I think this is the same bed I had when I lived here, the lumps seem familiar."

She lifted herself from him and they both were a sticky mess. "I think we need a shower Jakie," she giggled.

"Yup, that might be a good idea," he replied and then grinning he added. "We've never done it in the shower before."

"You never made such a mess before," she sighed. "Okay, there was the last time. By the way, Jerry is going to kill you for this."

"Nope, I told him that we were going to get married and I was taking away his best girl," the raccoon snickered. "I think he will be happy when I tell him you said no."

"I was right, the devil is inside of you boyo," she laughed.

"And in a few moments, I'm going to be inside you…again," he growled as he slapped her in the rear.

The raccoon slept soundly that night with the wildcat curled in his arms, at least at the beginning. True to his species, he soon sprawled across the bed finally forcing his companion to shift herself several times during the night The sun was up by the time he awoke, stretching he reached for her and drew her back into his arms. "Did you change your mind about marrying me yet?" he whispered in her ear and began nibbling at her neck.

"Ach, you must be joking Jakie," she protested. "You flipped and flopped all night long! If I married you, I'd never get a decent night sleep. What is it about you coons and your sprawling?"

"Hey, this is the first time we ever spent a full night together…," He began to say, but there was a knock on the door. "Oh no, do you think that is Jerry?"

Looking at the bed and all the stains, the wildcat winced. "I hope not or we are as good as dead," she replied.

The raccoon found his undershorts and pulled them on as he slowly walked to the door and peered into the eye hole. "Damn, it's worse!" he snapped as he unchained the door and threw it open to face a red fox in a police uniform.

"Well, aren't you predictable?" Nick laughed as he leaned against the now open door and gave the raccoon a grin. "I figured you would run here." Looking over his friend's shoulder, he waved his paw at the naked wildcat still sitting on the bed. "Hi Meredith, you're looking as lovely as ever despite the mess you two made of the bed."

The hooker actually blushed as she grabbed and pulled a sheet over her nakedness.

"What do you want fox?" the raccoon snapped. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

"So you are, but Bogo sent me to bring you back for questioning," the fox answered with a shrug. "He thinks that you know where the priest went."

The raccoon's ears drooped and he sighed, "He's dead Nick and it's my fault."

The fox gave him a concerned look as he stepped forward and closed the door before firmly asking, "Did you kill him?"

The raccoon looked down at the floor, "No..but…but I didn't save him."

"Jakie…" the wildcat began, but the fox's look made her stop and remain silent.

"Jake, did you cause his death?" Nick asked as he grabbed his friend's shoulders with his paws. "Look me in the eyes, I want the truth."

"I left him on the platform in Meyer's Pond," Jake sniffled. "I was going to call the station and let you know where he was, but I threw him the stone and when he tried to get it…"

"He fell through the ice," Nick finished. The raccoon nodded at him and sighed. "He had a choice Jake, he could have stayed on the platform but he chose to step off knowing that the ice wouldn't hold his weight, didn't he?" The raccoon nodded again. "Then he chose to die, it wasn't your fault. He placed his faith in the wrong god."

"Still…" Jake began.

"Still nothing," the fox snapped. "You officially don't know anything, remember that!"

"But…" the raccoon said.

"But nothing!" the fox snarled. "You didn't kill him and I'll take the blame before you do, I don't want you to go back to jail."

"Nick you're the law!" Jake protested.

"Damn it Jake, you're my best friend," the fox said as he hugged the raccoon. "I'm not letting you take the fall for some damned psycho!"

The raccoon looked down at the floor again, "I'm sorry I let you down."

The fox gave him an astonished look. "You didn't let me down, you promised me you wouldn't kill the bastard and you didn't. If he had done to Carrots what he did to Jasmine, I would have torn him to shreds with my bare teeth. He chose his own fate and his death was of his own arrogance, not yours."

The raccoon slowly nodded and hugged his friend again.

"Now you two clean up and then I'll let you treat me to breakfast," the fox said as he opened the motel room door. "Don't make me wait too long, I'm out of coffee."

Jake weakly smiled as he turned to face the naked wildcat lounged on the bed. "Well I guess we better take another shower," he said as his smile changed to a grin. "Together?"

"Ach laddie you're insatiable," she laughed as she rolled off the bed and with her tail playfully twitching she walked towards the bathroom. She giggled because the raccoon was now right behind her.

Inside the unmarked police cruiser parked down the street from the motel, the fox sighed as he picked up a magazine and began read it as he waited. He was on his second magazine when the raccoon and wildcat finally emerged from the room. "Horny bastard," he chuckled as his best friend waved to him.


	26. The Capybara

**Chapter 26: The Capybara**

 **Everything looks like it's finally over for Jake and his team, or is it just beginning?**

* * *

Their van was old and rusty as they cruised the streets of the Rainforest District, the two cousins inside had always been somewhat useless in life. Even their parents finally gave up on them and sent them north from their homeland to hopefully find a living of their own in the city. Once in the city, Luiz and Emiliano took up a life of petty crime. Today the two grungy dressed cousins had branch out from simple battery and petty theft to kitnapping, the money was just too great of a temptation.

"Hey, what about her?" Luiz asked as he pointed toward a squirrel walking down the sidewalk.

"The doc said cats and that ain't a cat idiot!" Emiliano fussed. "Weren't you listening to him?"

"I was rolling nip joints, you know with the good stuff," the other Capybara laughed, his grin showed his broken yellow stained front tooth. "I figured you'd pay attention."

The van backfired and Luiz gave his cousin a look. "Dude I thought you fixed that?" he asked. "We can't afford to get pulled over for a ticket."

"Hey lookie what we got here!" Emiliano excitedly pointed at the attractive servil in a black and red checkered flannel shirt and tight jeans, The cat was standing on the street corner with two suitcases sitting by her hindpaws. "Ain't she a hooker? "

"Yeah, I've seen her before, easy mark," his cousin jubilantly answered. "It looks like she's leaving anyways, so no one important will miss her." He began to turn the van around when a red pickup truck pulled up to the curbside and a coyote jumped out and ran around the truck.

They watched as a grinning coyote in a matching flannel shirt and jeans, his tail furiously wagging behind him, picked up the cat's suitcases and set them in the back of the truck. Then after opening the passenger side door, he scooped up the cat and passionately kissed her before carrying her laughingly to the truck.

"Yuck!" Emiliano said. "What's this world coming for when canines and cats start getting together?"

"Specieist," his cousin laughed. "I think they look cute together."

"Gaakk! You're going to make me puke," the other rodent replied, trying to make a gagging noise. "It's just that they are so…unnatural."

"Come on we need to find someone for the doc and we need the cash," Luiz snapped.

"Ever wonder what the doc does with those cats?" Emiliano asked. "I mean, you don't see them after they are delivered. I heard he's been dumping bodies in the swamp, those that didn't survive his treatments."

"Do I care what he does to them?" his cousin remarked with a shrug. "As long as we get paid, I don't care."

"Yeah but kittens?" the other **c** apybara continued. "Look grown hookers are trash, the swamp cats are trash, but kittens? The cops are going crazy looking for them, that's heavy heat."

"Kits disappear all the time from the streets," Emiliano growled. "Homeless kittens will never be missed and that's all we've been cruising for anyways."

"We haven't seen any lately, at least around here," Luiz grumbled. "Maybe we should try Tundratown?"

"Shit I'm not going anywhere near that side of the wall," his cousin huffed. "That's Northern Mob territory, I not going over there because those SOBs will hunt us down and send us for a one way icy swim."

A well-dressed jaguar in a dark blue business suit caught their eye. "She's alone, why don't we grab her, Emiliano asked"

"No way, she's married and looks like she has some money," Luiz answered. "She looks important, that'll open a can of worms."

They drove a few miles more toward one of the many park areas, passing a patrol cruiser parked on the side of the road. A zebra in police uniform had a weasel pressed against the car and was handcuffing the mammal. "Looks like they caught the Duke again," Emiliano laughed. "That asshole is still trying to unload those bootleg DVDs, you'd think he'd move on to a new scam."

"Some mammals never learn," Luiz chuckled as he wheeled his van down the road into the park and towards the playground.

"Lookie there!" Emiliano suddenly shouted. "A teenage kitten playing all by herself and poor old grandma napping on the bench. The Doc pays extra for the young ones, I'll bet we'll be long gone by the time granny wakes up."

"I don't know, there's a cop just a mile away. If she wakes up and sees us, we're fried. " Luiz sighed.

"She's not going a wake up," Emiliano snorted. "We'll make it fast, bag the cat and disappear."

Luiz slowly pulled the van off the road, behind some palms and the cousins slipped down through the tropical growth towards the playground. "I'm not sure, what if the old hag wakes up before we're out of here?"

"Look I brought another bag, a gag, and some rope, so lets sneak up on the old cat and tie her up. Then we can nab the kitten," his cousin offered.

"It's kind of weird to see a snow leopard here in the rainforest, usually they live in Tundratown?" Luiz observed. His cousin just shrugged, the two capybara would have had their hoofs full if the cat was in her prime, but the leopard was elderly and asleep. They jumped on her and she did struggle, swiping at Emiliano with her claws before they subdued her and left her tied up and gagged on the bench.

The kitten ran towards them screaming for her grandmother, her claws out in anger. Luiz looked at her and said, "Look sweetheart I'm going to kill your old granny if you don't do as we say."

"Hey that was easier than I thought," Luiz triumphantly proclaimed moments later as they drove away towards the highway with the kitten bound and gagged in the back of the van. "Now for our payday!"

Emiliano's ears drooped at the sound of crying from the back of the van, but only for a few moments before he thought of all the money they were going to get. "Yeah, payday cousin," the Capybara sighed. "After this, I need to get stoned."

The cousins got their money and quickly wasted it on drugs, hookers, and booze, just like they always did in the past. However unbeknownst to them, their kitnapping had set into motion a chain of events that would shake up the very lives of everyone in the city and propel a certain raccoon into the public spotlight.

* * *

The next day in Tundratown, Jake Runnel stared out of the mansion's window as the afternoon snow was falling on the gardens of ice below. The raccoon didn't like the cold and he shuddered at the thought of living here and having to deal with a thick winter fur coat. He always had his fur groomed close for warm weather, even during the winter months. Also, the cold made him want to eat more because of an ancestral instinctual craving to build up his body weight for the lean winter months. For a modern mammal, having food available all year was no longer an issue but the instincts were still within him trying to drive his behavior. Finally he sighed and turned back to the little shrew.

"I'm not a private investigator Fru Fru," Jake said to Mr. Big's daughter. She had just asked him to look into the disappearance of her former nanny's fourteen year old grandkitten. "I've never had to do anything like this before. What do the cops say, do they have any leads?"

"Daddy's mammals haven't been able to find her and the cops are not much help either. Please Jake, I need your help. We need to find her soon! Pleeease!" Fru Fru sniffled. The sight of the little shrew's tears was more then he could take.

"All right, I'll see what I can do," Jake said and then he sighed again. "But I am making no promises."

* * *

 **Continued in _Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption, Chapter 7: A Favor For Fru Fru_ . It's not safe being a feline in Zootopia when a mad scientist decides to unleash a biological horror. **


	27. The Walrus

**Chapter 27: The Walrus**

 **The fate of the damned stone is revealed and is the world finally safe from the ancient god** **Ouroboros?**

* * *

It was several months later as the _Sea Wanderer_ plowed through the thin layer of ice as she made her way into the cold northern seas, the sun was still bright despite the time of day. It was summer and this far north, it never fully got dark. Captain Morzhski looked across the deck towards his passengers standing near the bow. There were two white arctic wolves wearing short-sleeved polo shirts and slacks and the white jackal with the gray paw, she was wrapped up in a heavy blue coat and still cold. They were talking to one of his crewmates, a skinny seal who was nicknamed Blowhard.

Morzhski had been a captain for over forty years and had traveled far and wide from the coast of the Great Sahara to the exotic ports of Greater Amir. His latest ship the _Sea Wanderer_ was converted from an old military minesweeper for crabbing, but the two wolves who called themselves Snarloff booked the ship for another purpose. They knew that the captain and his crew could be trusted, all had a reputation among certain elements of society of being reliable. Besides, the captain was also an ordained seagoing minister of the Church.

The seal leaned over the railing as a narwhal's long tusk broke surface through the thin ice, two large menacing orcas flanked the whale. The narwhal spoke in the seafarer's language to Blowhard, who translated the clicks, whistles and knocks into common language for the canids. "Sister Alexis says that the stone has been placed within the cavern and that the charges are all primed," the seal told the others. "All you have to do is press the button."

"And the cameras?" the wolf named Boris asked as he turned and looked towards the captain.

"Aye, they're in place landlubber," the captain replied. "Everything is in place, just as the Church planned. Now let's finish this, its past time for chow."

The wolf held the detonator in his paw, but instead of pressing the button he handed it to the jackal. "Here cousin, it's been your burden and time to close this chapter of your life and move on to a new one."

"It was a brilliant idea to seal the stone in a place so cold, may the Bright One be praised!" the jackal said as she reached and took the detonator from his paw. "The Ouroboros hates the cold." She pushed the button and there was a low underwater rumble. The narwhal dove and was gone for several minutes before surfacing and triumphantly calling over to the seal.

"She says it's buried under tons of stone," the seal translated.

"Well brother, that puts one more artifact out of reach of the Others for now," Boris said with a sigh as he put his paw on his brother's shoulder. "Now let's get to dinner, your wife gets almost as cranky as my nephews and nieces when she misses a meal."

"Tell me about it brother," the other wolf named Sven laughed, he had a strong northern accent.

"Blimey, it's freezing up here!" a voice called from down the deck. "Are you blokes done yet? One of the pups is so hungry that he tried to eat my tail."

"Aw and it's such a cute tail too," Boris laughed as he walked up to the dingo, unzipped his lover's jacket and ran his paws around his waist. "And as for being cold, I'll warm you up later tonight when we get to bed."

"You still owe me a tropical cruise lover," the dingo chuckled before he kissed the wolf. "Now stop it, those paws are cold!"

"Will you two get a room!" a laugh came from the galley as a strapping coyote stepped out onto the deck, he grinned at the jackal and winked as she smiled at him. "Besides Romeo, you aren't the only mammal that will need thawing out tonight." The jackal blushed at his comments.

"Himlen hjälpa mig!" the other brother sighed in Northern Wolf as he muzzlepawed himself. "Captain if this ship rocks so much tonight that it turns over, don't blame me!"

"Watcher, I once captained a cruise ship full of honeymooners," the walrus chucked. "If that ship didn't sink, I think the _Sea Wanderer_ will survive these four."

The mammals stopped and looked over the water, waving at the little whale and her escorts as they made their way further northward and towards their homes.

It was late that evening as Tafrara snuggled closer into her lover's arms, the coyote was softly snoring. She remembered the words that the blind coyote elder told her years ago in the Green Mountains as he held her paw one night while they sat in a flower covered field under the shining moon. _"Much is expected of you,"_ he sighed. _"But much of this is placed upon you by yourself. The Creator has a path chosen for you to walk, but she who is he does not want you to live only in expectations of what will come, but to live your life for yourself too."_ She was happy to finally be free to live her life for herself.

* * *

 _Far away to the south in the high mountains of_ _Patagonia, a lama reached down into the icy cold waters of the stream he was crossing and picked up a strange looking artifact. He held it towards the setting sun, turning the blue_ _lapis lazuli stone amulet over in his hoof. To him, it looked like a snake eating its own tail and he thought that it was a strange thing to find this far up the slopes of the holy mountain? But then again, there are the old legends of the snake creatures who once lived in the valley far below before Inti destroyed them. He hesitated as he thought about taking it to the parish priest, but then he considered that maybe it might be worth something at the market in the morning. So instead, he slipped the strange blue amulet into his backpack and continued this journey home._

* * *

 **The English translation of the Swedish phrase himlen hjälpa mig is heaven help me. My apologies to any Swedish readers for calling your language Northern Wolf, but it fits.**

 _ **I hope you enjoyed this story, for more stories about Nick's best friend, Jake Runnel:**_

 _ **Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption**_ \- The raccoon should not have punched the fox, but if he hadn't they would have never become friends. A story about a reformed crooked coon, a sly fox, and a cute bunny who are living in a big city. (Completed – Rated M)

 _ **Sins Of Our Fathers**_ \- Sometimes the children must set right the wrongs of their fathers and bring justice to those who were hurt. At the same time, an outsider must find a balance between his species' social beliefs that are different from those of the city around him. Nick Wilde, Wolford, and Fangmeyer hunt a desperate war criminal who is hiding in their city, as Nick's best friend Jake slips back to his old ways. This story is based on Chapter 5 of a Raccoon's Redemption. (Completed– Rated M )

 _ **Zootopia: A Raccoon's Rescue -**_ A cynical teenage fox named Nick learns the joy of helping out someone in need on Halloween Night when he rescues a little raccoon kit in trouble. The night Jake Runnel first met Nick Wilde. (Completed- Rated T)

 _ **Zootopia: A Raccoon's Romance**_ \- Jake Runnel thinks he's a stud, after all he's romped his way through many a willing young lady's bed. But now he's trying to win his true love's heart despite his own inexperience, insecurities and self-doubts? Can Nick save the raccoon from himself? Nick Wilde's best friend returns in a story of love and redemption. (Pending - Rated M)

 ** _Zootopia Short Stories: A Raven's Kittens_** **-** Nick and his best friend Jake Runnel take Jake's two boys, little Nicky and Freddie to see Santa Paws and then visit an old friend of Jake's afterward. The highland wildcat tries to tell the boys an old tale for the holidays, but have you ever tried telling a story to two inquisitive seven-year-old raccoons and a rambunctious fox? (Completed – Rated T)


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